Heart's Not There
by LochlynParker
Summary: Jackson is held captive against his will by dark!Parrish as an old enemy returns looking for vengeance. Can Jackson be saved? Can they save themselves? Sciam! Warnings inside.
1. Chapter 1

**Heart's Not There**

**A/N: YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED. This story will be way darker than my other stories I have floating around this site. If you are not ok with slash, with some noncon and torture aspects, please turn away now. But for the more adventurous readers, this is an alternate season four storyline. Other characters will be joining in later chapters, so don't think this is going to remain a dungeon porn story, there is a bigger picture involved that will be slowly revealed!**

**Chapter One: To Have and to Hold**

When Jackson's adopted parents told him they were moving to London, he couldn't have been more thrilled. Considering everything that had happened to him over the past couple months, he was more than ready for a change of pace. Being a new werewolf in London would be a challenge for him, but he had finally achieved what he had always wanted: the most competitive edge he could have asked for. He knew that whatever challenges awaited him in this new country he could tackle head on, and he was ready for it.

What he didn't expect was to be taken the night before he was to join his parents. They had gone up a week before to start unpacking and get the house in order.

Spring's chill still lingered in the early summer air. The full moon had been a few nights before – another reason why he had wanted to stay behind. The last thing he wanted was to encounter a full moon in a landscape he hadn't had proper time to fully explore. He had just left Lydia's house, about to head over to Danny's, where he was staying since his house sat empty – not to mention sold to another family already.

Half way there he noticed a car pass by. The reason it stood out as odd was he was certain it had passed him by, not once, but two times in the past five minutes. With tinted windows, there was no way to see who drove, but the car looked familiar, although he couldn't quite place it.

The car came around for a fourth pass and Jackson was ready for it. He stepped out into the road and turned to face the driver. The vehicle eased to a stop and just sat there, idling.

Jackson waited for anything to happen, but nothing did for a few still moments. Clenching his hand into a fist, he took a step towards the car, which promptly shot a few feet in reverse.

"Oh come on, what is this about?" Jackson asked quietly.

The car backed up a little more, and for a second Jackson hoped it would find a suitable driveway and turn around, never to be seen again. Jackson's shoulders relaxed and he had time to breathe out a small sigh of relief before the car shifted gears and came speeding at him.

He barely had time to acknowledge what was happening, much less make any move to get out of the way. The front bumper hit him just below the knees, and his head slammed against the windshield, sending cracks along the glass. He bounced off the top of the car before crashing to the ground in a pile of limbs.

Pain shook through his body and his vision blurred. He faintly registered that the car had pulled to a stop and the driver's side door opened. Footsteps padded across the pavement, and a shadow fell across the boy.

The other person knelt down, his face entering Jackson's field of vision. Like his car, the man himself looked very familiar to the teen, but he still had no idea how he knew this man.

Jackson tried to move despite the agony, and the man drove a knee into his side. "Now, now, little wolfie," he said. "We've only just begun to play."

He leaned over Jackson, and with one hand took his jaw, wrenching his head upward. The man mashed his lips against Jackson's, licking at the small trail of blood leaking out the left side. Jackson wanted to pull away but found himself frozen. A random thought shot through his head: if only Danny could have seen this, he would have shit himself.

When the man pulled back, Jackson spit in his face. "What the fuck?"

The man wiped at his cheek, then punched Jackson in the throat. "You will learn to speak when you are spoken to. What plans I have for you…"

He roughly grabbed Jackson and began dragging him to the car. This was a task he seemed to perform with relative ease, which startled Jackson. Something was definitely off about this guy, and by that he meant that there was something inhuman about him. He thought of the cell phone in his pocket, and wondered if it had made it through the crash unharmed. Another part of him couldn't understand how, or why, this was happening to him.

"Please, stop-"

His head rocked back with another punch. "What the hell did I just say, boy? You certainly have a lot to learn. And I can't wait to teach you."

The rear door opened, and Jackson was roughly thrown headfirst into it. His body erupted in a fresh wave of pain, and his vision dimmed. He felt that he was going to pass out, and that terrified him. There was no telling what this man had in store for him.

He started the car and began swiftly driving away. "Now, don't think about trying anything." He held up a gun, and once again Jackson could have sworn he'd seen it before.

Then something clicked into place. That gun was a standard issue for the Beacon Hills Police Department. The car, he realized, he had seen parked outside the Sherriff's office. Did that mean that the man who had just kidnapped him was a fucking cop? Jackson couldn't begin to comprehend what that might mean.

"Who are you?" Jackson asked, apparently not listening, as always.

"Shut the fuck up!" The man growled. "But I guess you should know. My name is Kyle Parrish, but you can call me Deputy. I'm the newest addition to your wonderful city's police force." He grinned in the rearview mirror, and it chilled Jackson to the bone.

Jackson was about to ask another question but Parrish anticipated that and pistol whipped him, his eyes never leaving the road. "No more questions."

They drove for a long enough time that Jackson figured they had to have left Beacon Hills. Parrish had the radio tuned to some country station, but kept the volume low, so the ride was mostly silent, punctuated only by the louder notes of music drifting from the speakers. Jackson already could feel himself beginning to heal, and just hoped this ride lasted long enough for him to take a stand when he exited the vehicle.

Why was this happening to him? His mind raced, trying to process the last twenty minutes. Parrish obviously knew what he was, and where he was going to be, but he had no idea how. He was new in town, and that had to mean something. But Jackson kept coming to a loss, that there was no logical explanation for this. All the while his body burned as it began healing. Since his resurrection, he had not encountered pain such as this, and it made it harder for him to think.

The cell phone. He still hadn't gotten a chance to check it yet, but with Parrish's eyes flickering to the rearview mirror, which he had tilted down so he could keep an eye on his prize, he didn't want to risk bringing attention to it. On the other hand, he risked the chance that wherever Parrish was taking him, there might not be any reception.

The car pulled to a stop and Jackson was able to look out the window. He saw a very generic looking cabin and nothing else save for a bunch of trees.

Parrish got out and walked around to the trunk. He rummaged around in there for a minute, which Jackson took to ready himself for when the back door opened. The problem with that was he had no idea which door Parrish would open, so he didn't know how to position himself.

Unfortunately for him, Parrish opened the driver's side door again, leaned across the center console, and electrocuted him with some sort of homemade device.

He lost consciousness.

When Jackson woke up, he found his body healed. That told him he had been out for a long time, perhaps even a day. His hands were bound above his head in thick, iron chains. The room was mostly bare and unfinished. Dirt covered the floor and with the lack of windows, he had to be in a basement.

His throat was dry, but at least he was still alive. For the time being, anyway.

A door he couldn't see creaked open and he heard heavy footsteps on stairs. As they grew closer Jackson found himself drawing in on himself. He wanted to shy away from this encounter.

"Hey there," Parrish called, coming around a corner. He brought with him a glass of water. He tipped it to Jackson's lips and said, "I'll allow you something to say, if you'd like to take the chance."

"People will come looking for me," he said, his voice ragged.

"I'm assuming as much, but where exactly are they going to be looking?" the deputy sat back, the right side of his lips jerking up in a crooked smile. "You see, you checked into the airport on time today, ready to take your flight. Anyone who's looking for you will probably start on the wrong continent, my boy."

Jackson just stared at him, unbelieving.

"So we're going to have plenty of time," he said, taking one finger and trailing it over the exposed flesh on Jackson's torso, through the holes in his shredded shirt.

Wanting to ask for what, Jackson steeled himself. Whatever this maniac wanted, he was certain it would be revealed in time. After all, time was all he had now.

What confused him was that Parrish now seemed to be almost gentle with him. In the ten minutes of the attack, he had been brutal several times. In the five minutes since he crept down those stairs, the only contact they had was this caress, and while Jackson's body wasn't responding the way he assumed Parrish wanted, this was far superior than fists and knees.

Parrish gave him another drink from the cup. This time Jackson thought he tasted something in it this time, but he was so thirsty he decided to worry about that later.

"Yeah, drink up."

Jackson suddenly wanted to refuse, to tell him that he _tasted_ whatever it was spiked with. He wanted to scream, to rage against his chains, but he felt himself almost deflating.

"What…?" he mumbled, not caring whether or not Parrish retaliated.

"It's just a little concoction. Water with Viagra and ketamine," now he was smiling fully. If the situation was different, Jackson thought his kidnapper might look a little like the world's cutest puppy. But he was just alarmed.

"I think it's starting to take effect, so we're going to play a little game of trust." Parrish took out a set of keys from his pocket and carefully picked through them, searching for the correct one. "Would you like to come out and play?"

He slid the key into the lock and Jackson's arms fell painfully to his side. He had lost all control over his body, and would have slumped to the ground if the deputy hadn't wrapped an arm around him and pulled their bodies together. Parrish tore off what remained of the wolf's clothing, tossing it unceremoniously to the side. He carefully lowered Jackson to the floor, then went to work shedding his own uniform. Jackson noticed he took the time to painstakingly fold the fabric.

Jackson began blacking out, then jumping back to reality. The next thirty minutes were filled with shooting pain and immense pleasure. He was vaguely aware of Parrish's cock thrusting inside of him, and it filled him with horror. One time, he swam awake to find the deputy's mouth firmly on his member. He still felt terrified, but it was the irrational fear that this was a _man_ going to town on his body instead of general terror at the surrounding circumstances.

Blacking out again, when he came to Parrish was sitting in a crouched position maybe six inches away from his face. He leaned in and kissed him again. Jackson shook beneath him, realizing that he once again was bound in the chains.

"That was fun," he said. "We're going to have a blast, you and I."

Jackson was at a complete loss for words. His eyes wouldn't focus on anything – Parrish was a fuzzy shape that began backing away. He noticed that he was still naked.

"My clothes…" he said.

"Those, my dear, you'll have to earn back. We have a long way to go, you see. Such plans I have for you, but in order to get what I need, I'm going to have to break you first. Then we'll start putting the pieces back together. But for now, I have to get back to work, keeping the peace in Beacon Hills," he said with a laugh.

He trudged back up the stairs. Jackson heard the door slam shut, and he was left in the darkness. He hoped, prayed, that the members of his pack had the power to sort of sense him out, or at least know that he was in major trouble. Something told him packs didn't work like that, but it seemed as though it was his only hope now.


	2. Chapter 2: A Summer Gone

**Chapter Two: A Summer Gone**

**A/N: Hey all, so I know I said this was an alternate season 4 timeline, and it is, it's just going to take a couple chapters to get there. I'm also a little confused on the actual timeline of seasons 2 and 3a, so please forgive any discrepancies. The events of season 3 will unfold in basically canon format, but I will diverge from there. This chapter is way fluffier than the last one, but I promise to get back to Jackson's suffering in the next installment. Also, Jackson was my favorite character on the show. Just thought I needed to throw that in there.**

Lydia Martin stood in the police station. Again. She felt like she was harassing the local police department, but she also knew she wasn't sorry about it at all. It had been two months since Jackson disappeared, and no one could even seem to tell her what country he was in. While Deputy Parrish had been super patient with her, she could tell it was beginning to wear thin.

"So you're telling me that you still have nothing?"

"Lydia, nothing's changed in over a month. We know nothing more, really, than we learned in that first week. Jackson checked in for his flight, but the two theories that we are still working on remained the same. He either never boarded the plane, although we have reports about someone close to his description boarding, or he evaded his parents when the plane touched down in London, either by his choice or not. We just don't know." He had given her this same speech at least twice a week since he went missing.

"This is unacceptable!"

"Lydia, in a couple more months Jackson will be turning eighteen. Once that happens, the case will have to be dropped. Adults are allowed to leave their families and friends without an explanation. We are doing everything we can think of, but we don't have the budget for a global search."

She was about to speak up again when he waved her off. "I'm sorry, but this is where we stand. If you don't mind, I have other work that needs to be done." He grabbed his keys, walked around the counter, and exited the building without so much as a goodbye.

Frustrated, she left the station. Her phone went to her pocket to call Allison, but she decided against it. Raging to her best friend wasn't helping Jackson. She thought about calling Danny, because she knew he didn't stay the last night before his flight at his house, but again, that would lead to a dead end. She'd already exhausted Danny's supply of information. He was still reeling from losing his best friend.

Getting in her car, she thought maybe a walk would be good to clear her head. School would be starting soon, and that would provide her with enough distraction as it was. Something about the way Jackson vanished, and the timing of it, worried her.

This was Beacon Hills, after all. So something supernatural wasn't entirely out of the question. But that was Scott and Derek's area of expertise, and as far as she knew, they hadn't been able to come up with anything either. And she had to admit that it was looking, more and more each day, that Jackson had simply run off.

The problem with that theory was that running away wasn't Jackson's style. If he had an issue with something, history told her that he faced it head on, while taking as many people down with him as possible. No matter what he was doing, he did it like a bull in a china shop.

She pulled to a stop in the parking lot of a park with several wooded trails. Sunlight filtered through the branches as she began walking.

It took her a few minutes before she realized that she'd never been to this park before. Something had led her here, like before. The last thing she needed today was another dead body popping up.

She wanted to return to her car, and get the hell out of here. But she knew, deep down, that if she got in the car, she'd just end up circling back here, so she might as well just let this play out. Pushing the thoughts to the back of her mind, she continued meandering through the woods, trying to think of another explanation for Jackson. He was part of Scott's pack, after all, and she knew it killed Scott that he couldn't do anything about it.

About half an hour later, with no dead body to show for her walk, she went back to her car. That peculiar feeling of needing to seek something out had abated, and that almost disturbed her as much as if she had found a dead body, as this had never happened to her before.

Maybe she would call Allison, after all. She needed to take a step back, maybe what she needed was a nice back to school shopping spree. On second thought, that sounded more like a task for Danny. These days, Allison was more into her training instead of discussing couture. So yes, Danny all the way.

As she settled back into her car, she rested her head on the steering wheel for a bit before clawing her cell phone out of her pocket.

* * *

Derek Hale was restless. He had been waiting all day, and now he was only moments away from a wild night.

The full moon was still a few days away but he could already feel its pull, and that made him more antsy than usual. He had received the text only a few minutes ago, but it had been enough to get him rock hard. He didn't know where this sexual side of him had come from, but he had been embracing it fully.

Yes, there was always something else to concern himself with. Jackson being gone was just another reason to brood, but for some reason he just couldn't be his typical downer self on nights like these. The air around him almost seemed electrified in a way.

Of course, he heard the footsteps long before they arrived at his door. This was one of his favorite parts. When the knock came at the door, he crept silently over to it. His gentleman caller was always a little out of breath when he stood on the other side of the door, and Derek always took a minute to just lean his ear against the metal and stood there, listening to his heartbeat and breathing.

He rubbed his stomach under his wife beater, playing along the elastic of his boxer briefs. Letting out a small sigh, he flung the door open and grinned. "Hello, Deputy."

Parrish crossed the threshold and greeted his host by way of a kiss.

"What took you so long?" Derek asked.

"Sorry babe, I had to stop by the cabin real quick. But I'm here now," he replied with a twinkle in his eye.

Derek never thought he would have fallen so hard or so fast for the newest deputy to join the BHPD. Parrish definitely wasn't his type, but something about him was just too adorable, like he wasn't real. Since he was a recent addition to the town, Derek had to sniff around a little bit, but he hadn't been able to find anything supernatural about him, except for his ability to charm anyone who crossed his path.

"When am I going to get some time at the cabin?"

"I told you, my uncle really let the place go to hell the last few years of his life. And with my new position, I don't have too much time to work on it. Once it gets up to snuff, however, can take a week and just do whatever comes to mind." Parrish started towards the couch, Derek trailing right behind him.

Off in the distance, he heard a howl. The alpha pack was on the move, but Derek didn't care. He was entranced with this man, and whatever the alphas were planning, they sure were taking their time. This night was his. And besides, Scott was his alpha now. Let him deal with them.

"What did you want to get into tonight?" Derek asked, laying his head on Parrish's shoulder. "I could make some dinner, or we could put on a movie."

"That would just be distracting, now wouldn't it?" Parrish said, and leaned in for another kiss. He turned and pushed Derek down onto the sofa. "Besides, it can be dangerous to cook naked." His eyes were making Derek weak.

Parrish was usually such a sweet, gentle man, but whenever it came time to do the deed he turned into a savage beast. He ripped the shirt from Derek's back, sending tatters to the floor. Derek tried to start unbuttoning Parrish's shirt, but his hand was knocked away. It was strange that in every other aspect of his life, Derek was the one in charge. There was something about losing himself in the abandonment of giving himself over to the deputy, giving him full control, that turned him on immensely.

Suddenly they were both naked. Sometimes, around Parrish, Derek tended to lose small tracks of time. He chalked it up to being in the moment, feeling that ecstasy, but even once in a while it scared him. Like this sense of being totally vulnerable at a moment's notice. But all in all it was a small flicker in the back of his mind.

Parrish slipped inside him, making Derek moan.

They thrashed together on the sofa, two becoming one. Derek had a brief lapse in time again, and when he came to it was over. Depressing that he couldn't remember the climax, but he could still sense Parrish inside him.

He rolled over and fell off the couch, wondering where his lover had gone. Their clothes were still crumpled in the pile they had been thrown in, a make-shift pillow of sorts for Derek. He twisted his head and breathed in the full scent of Parrish. The smell alone was enough to bring him half-erect.

The light was on in the bathroom, answering his question. Of course the deputy wouldn't just go running naked from his apartment, especially before saying goodbye.

He curled the shirt over his head, and caught a slightly different aroma than he was used to getting from the man. It was different, earthier, and really familiar. Try as he may he couldn't place it.

Parrish came out of the bathroom, a goofy grin on his mouth.

Derek pulled the shirt away from his face and looked up at the other man. His face must have betrayed his confusion because Parrish asked him if something was wrong.

"No, it's nothing," Derek replied, pulling himself off the floor. "Did you want to grab something to eat now?"

Parrish crossed the room and pulled Derek against him. "How about a shower?"

* * *

Lydia knew Danny was still very upset about Jackson, more so than even she was. He was honestly bringing her mood down, but still, the company was welcome. They could share this pain, it brought them closer together. On top of losing Jackson, she knew he had had feelings for Matt as well, and he was gone too. Except at least they all knew that Matt had drowned, while Jackson's fate remained murky.

Danny hadn't said much during the time they spent wandering aimlessly around the mall. With everything that was going on, Lydia wasn't even that into shopping. Maybe she should have called Allison and had an impromptu self defense lesson.

"… and I mean, if he just ran away, he would have at least _texted_ me, right?" Danny was talking and Lydia hadn't noticed. She was starting to get that feeling again, that call which almost always led to a dead body. She wondered again why she didn't find a body that afternoon when she was walking around that foreign park.

Danny stared at her. She realized she had been asked a question, but couldn't remember hearing it. "Danny, I am so sorry, what?"

"Do you think Jackson's dead?" His eyes were teary, his face sullen.

"Honestly? I don't think so."

"How can you be so sure?"

Lydia knew he had been introduced into the world of the supernatural, but he was also dealing with so much else right now that she didn't want to burden him with everything that was happening with her. "Let's just say that I get feelings about these sort of things, and I really don't think he's gone."

Danny was visibly relieved. "I don't really understand what you're talking about, but thank you."

They meandered out a side door, exiting the mall. Lydia was leading them somewhere, but she had yet to figure out where. That feeling was overwhelming her again.

"Where are we going?" Danny asked as they passed Lydia's car and into a small wooded area on the opposite side of the parking lot. Night was in full bloom, but the light from the mostly full moon was more than enough to illuminate their path, although neither knew where it ended.

"I don't know," Lydia said. "I just feel… pulled here." She grabbed her keys out of her clutch and offered them to her friend. "You can wait in the car if you'd like."

"No, that's alright." Even though his words were sincere and bold, he moved a little closer to her.

They walked a little further and Lydia could hear the babbling of a creek or small river. She wasn't as familiar with the topography of the area as her wolf friends, but she thought she remembered being a large creek that cut through Beacon Hills around this point, and come to think of it, this was downstream from the park she had visited earlier. Was anything in her life coincidence?

"Oh my god," Danny gasped.

At first Lydia didn't see what he saw. She followed his gaze and just saw darkness and shadows, and a lot of underbrush. Then, in a random moonbeam, she saw a hand curled into a fist, poking out from around a tree.


	3. Chapter 3: Field of Paper Flowers

**Chapter Three: Field of Paper Flowers**

Lydia couldn't get the image of that hand out of her mind. She and Danny had called the cops, but by the time they arrived, the body was gone. The only part she had seen was that hand, but it was more than enough to rattle her. It had looked blue and bloated, as though it had spent a long trip down the river.

Scott and his pack were too entangled with everything supernatural in Beacon Hills, but as the months passed they completely forgot about it, leaving Lydia alone with this problem. Eventually, she stopped bringing it up, opting to simmer in her thoughts and silently track the people in town that began to go missing – the ones, at least seemingly, unconnected to the whirlwind of murder the Alpha pack and the Darach left in their respective wakes. So far she had not been able to find any sort of link between them, but this was also unraveling gradually over the course of the year, so she remained vigilant.

For some reason she had convinced herself that this string of disappearances was somehow related to Jackson. Since no one had heard from him in the past several months, and her consistent nagging of the BHPD, she tried looking into these new missing people and connect them with her ex-boyfriend in some way. But she still came up empty.

The night before Allison died, she began having a strange, recurring dream:

_She was standing in a field of flowers, a pleasant breeze fluttering the petals, although she couldn't quite feel it. The sun blazed orange on the horizon, the tell-tale reds of evening bleeding over the crescent of the earth._

_There was something behind her, but she refused to turn around. Whatever it was had massive wings, of that she was sure. They flapped behind her menacingly, yet still she held strong, choosing to look at the setting sun and try to remember a time when things hadn't been this complicated, all the way back to when everything made sense. _

_She knelt down, wanting to take one of those beautiful yellow flowers in her fingers and smell the fragrant aroma, hoping it might take her mind off the monster behind her. It surprised her to find that the flower felt strange to the touch – it didn't bend to her as she thought it would._

_Upon closer inspection, she realized these weren't flowers at all, at least not in the real sense. Each and every bloom was made of yellow construction paper. This realization sent a shiver through her, to that deep dark place within herself reserved for that special title of "Banshee". _

_Even this fact was something of a relief to her, as long as she could distance her mind from the thing behind her._

_ "__Lydia."_

_At first it sounded like her name was whispered from the beast behind her, and her blood ran cold. Then, with the sound of paper crunching underfoot, someone approached from her left. Yet she was still too scared to turn her head._

_ "__Lydia," the voice said again, and this time she heard something familiar in the tone. _

_In this special place, there was no temperature, yet she still saw the breath misting before her. Something was incredibly wrong, something was coming, and she knew that while she was a beacon of death, there was nothing she could possibly do to prevent the outcome._

_She wanted to rise to her feet, turn and face the person calling out for her, but she couldn't. The footsteps neared, and then she felt the air distort as someone knelt beside her. A strong arm stretched across her back in a comforting embrace, and he said, "I'm not watching _The Notebook_ again."_

_Jackson!_

_Her heart filled with relief, but when she turned to him, to melt into his embrace as she had so often done in the past, he was gone, and she fell headfirst into the flowers._

It had been so long since he'd had any decency, the dreams were a welcome respite from the agony. Although the ending left something to be desired, they remained the one source of comfort in an otherwise waking nightmare.

The rules had been simple, and strictly enforced.

Jackson still didn't know what Parrish had in mind, or what he was trying to accomplish with this endless torture. Sometimes the deputy would be gone for days, leaving behind only a bottle of dirty water for him. Other times he could be heard upstairs, drilling and hammering.

Most things remained the same the time Jackson had spent here, but some things have begun to change. For instance, he was no longer forced to swallow that degrading elixir whenever Parrish fucked him. Instead, Parrish came down the stairs and knelt in front of Jackson, cupping his hand beneath his chin and angling his head up. Then he would sing softly, nothing contemporary, but songs that reminded Jackson of old rhymes or lullabies. These songs had an effect on him, almost like a tingling feeling spreading across his limbs, and he would black out.

Whenever he awoke, there was this sense of wholeness, and Parrish would be the first thing he saw, gently stroking his hair or caressing his side.

The worst part became the baths. Parrish still thought Jackson had not yet quite learned his new place. He was dosed in a cleansing powder, then Parrish turned on a high powered hose to spray him off. Even with his werewolf power it stung, and left his skin red and raw.

So when the dreams started, and he got to see Lydia, it gave him a hope he thought had abandoned him forever. He wanted to reach out to her, to feel her skin beneath his fingers, but the dream always ended before that happened. Lydia looked so anxious, so fixated on the sunset, so resistant to something he couldn't sense.

And the days continued, much of the same. Parrish refused to tell him anything about his plan, but it was obvious he had one. His songs grew more desperate sounding, an icy fire behind his eyes that made Jackson think he wasn't producing the reaction he intended. Sometimes the songs changed, and occasionally when he woke up feeling different, but there was no placing what that difference was.

The door opened at the top of the stairs, and Jackson didn't bother turning to look. It wasn't as if anyone else was ever going to come down here, and he became doubtful of ever seeing another living person.

What he hadn't expected was to hear a distinctive slithering sound begin down the steps. Jackson tried to make himself more alert, and craned his neck around, but he had been so weak for so long that he knew he couldn't defend himself from whatever it was that crept towards him.

As it rounded the corner, Jackson could barely make out a silhouette in the grim lighting that filtered through the small dirty windows of the basement. Whatever this thing was, it was huge, and yet oddly familiar in a way.

The thing lurked in the shadows at the foot of the stairs, and Jackson saw ice-blue eyes peering out at him. He had seen those eyes before, but he couldn't place them.

Jackson screwed his eyes shut and whispered, "It's not real, I'm just losing my mind from being down here. It's not real, it's not…"

A minute later he slowly reopened his eyes, hoping the thing had gone, or disappeared, but was disappointed. It remained where it had been before, as if studying him.

Jackson tried to focus his eyes, and somewhere in the darkness he thought he saw something he recognized. The creature called to some darkness within him, a part he couldn't quite place. He thought it might be trying to communicate in a way, but he didn't understand the message.

He heard the front door open, and the creature bristled at the sound. Footsteps moved towards the basement door and it bolted from its spot in the shadows, aiming for one of the windows near the ceiling. As it moved out into the shafts of daylight, Jackson's eye widened in terror. He knew now what it was, and more importantly who it was, but he couldn't find his voice, as it was trapped in his constricting throat.

For the first time in a long, long time, Jackson found himself panicking. What was he supposed to say to Parrish? He knew that thing would be back for him – this was a path he had been down before, only the roles were now twisted. And that thing looked way bigger than he was told, and immensely more horrifying than he ever imagined.

With the sound of shattering glass, Parrish's footstep became faster, and he thundered down the stairs. Jackson curled into a fetal position and tried to think about what was coming next.

**A/N: Sorry this chapter took so long, and that it's short and choppy. After I watched season 4, I decided I had to accelerate the storyline here because I HAVE SO MANY SCIAM FEELS and I need to get that pairing included in this as soon as possible. So that will begin in the next chapter, and hopefully they will start cranking out a lot faster now. I have so many big ideas for this story, things are going to start getting way twisted real quick so sit back and enjoy!**


	4. Chapter 4: The Pieces Where They Land

**Chapter Four: The Pieces Where They Land**

The lacrosse game had been a success, and Scott took his time in the showers after, lingering in the steam-filled room until he heard the footsteps enter the locker room. Turning his back to the entrance, he placed both hands on the tiled walls and waited. There was the sound of a locker opening and closing, and then the steps began again, this time heading in his direction. A smile crossed his lips and he half-turned his head as the beta entered the room.

Liam quickly moved across the small distance between them and tossed his towel to the side, then wrapped his arms around Scott's waist and nuzzled into his back.

"Good game tonight," Scott said, twisting around and looked down. "You were really impressive out there."

"I fumbled and didn't score a single point," Liam responded, absent-mindedly running his fingertips up and down Scott's abdomen.

"That's not what I meant." Scott leaned over and kissed the beta. "I meant that you were in total control tonight, and the full moon is only a couple days away. I could tell you felt it, and were able to remain yourself."

"Well," Liam mumbled, giving Scott a quick kiss on the neck, "I've had the best teacher."

Scott grinned and pulled away so Liam could begin washing himself off. These were the times, he reminded himself, as he often did now that Allison was gone, that he had to cherish. He wanted to remember this moment in its entirety, exactly how it happened. The way Liam's face scrunched up as he scrubbed at his back, the way the water cascaded down his body, everything and more. The lights had mostly shut down by this time, and he loved the way the moonlight fell over the beta's skin. Liam noticed his alpha's intense gaze, and reveled in it. For him, this was just another night, and he still held the idea that things could continue on this way forever.

Not wanting to ruin this moment, Scott made a mental note to have a talk with Liam at some time in the future. Nothing in Beacon Hills really lasted all that long, and the peace and calm since he rescued Liam on the top of the hospital was sure not to last. Lydia had made sure he was well aware that something was approaching, but not even she could really say from what direction – or in what form.

But for now, Scott had a happy beta, looking like the world's sweetest puppy, for him to occupy his time. Liam sauntered up to him with a goofy smirk on his face.

The two of them had kind of fallen into this pattern. There weren't exactly in a relationship, as Scott still didn't feel like he had properly mourned the passing of Allison, but they enjoyed each other's company, and contact.

Liam picked up his towel, which had only gotten slightly damp from the shower, and used it to wrap both Scott and himself up. With their bodies pressed together, Scott found it painfully obvious that Liam was expecting them to take that next step together, but he couldn't find it within him to go there. Not yet, and not here.

"Liam, it's way past the time the game ended," Scott said, pulling away. "You're way past your curfew, it's time to get you home."

Liam gave him an adorable frown before assenting and moving back into the main locker room to get his clothes. Scott started after him before he heard something.

He could tell Liam heard it too, as he froze a few feet away from his locker.

The scream bubbled up through the darkness of the school grounds, racing to their ears. By now Scott was familiar with Lydia's banshee wail, but this sounded different. There was true pain in it, with an undercurrent of sheer anxiety. He knew Liam probably couldn't tell all this, as he was still new to his super senses, but Scott had put in his practice time.

"Clothes – quickly!"

They raced to put on their clothing and bolted from the room, heading towards the sound. It originate from the lacrosse field, so they ran out into the moonlight, eyes frantically scanning the grass for the disturbance.

Someone was crouched by the far end of the bleachers, huddled over another form sprawled out on the ground. They were halfway there when Scott recognized Malia's brown hair. Speeding up, he skidded to a stop and saw Brett laying unconscious beneath her.

"Malia!" he cried, and when she looked up he saw how terrified she was. "What's going on?"

"I was just out here, and ran into Brett," she stammered. "Then it – it just came out of nowhere. It was so big!"

Liam looked between the two of them, at a loss for what to do. Brett had been horrible to him in their shared past, but seeing him like this put him at a loss for what to do.

Kneeling down, Scott placed a hand on her shoulder to steady her. "Malia, try to calm down. What happened?" While he said this, he examined Brett's body more. A dark pool was creeping out from his back and there were bruises on his face and neck. Something had put the hurt on him in a major way, but his chest was rising and falling, and his heart was beating, albeit slowly.

"It _swooped_ down on him. It knocked me out of the way and went after Brett. I've never seen anything that huge before!"

Scott lifted Brett slightly off the ground to inspect the wound. In the soft moonlight, he found that it had already healed up.

"Malia… how long ago did this happen? How did he have time to heal before you screamed?"

She drew up within herself. Scott could only see her eyes through the hair falling around her face, but it was enough to unnerve him. Malia had the potential for many things, but this level of fear was more than ample to shake him.

"My body just locked up." One of her hands moved up to the side of her neckline. "I just froze… I couldn't do anything."

Scott let Brett gently back down to the ground. "Wait a minute," he said, and pushed Malia's hair off her shoulder. Right where her hand had been was a small, almost surgical incision. He recoiled as though he had been struck. "You said this thing swooped?"

"Yeah," Malia answered, then pointed towards the field box, "and then it flew off over there."

Scott jumped to his feet. "Malia, Liam, stay here. Watch after Brett, make sure he wakes up."

"Where are you going?" Liam asked shakily.

"I need to get to Derek." His phone was already in his hand. "And I'm going to try to get to Argent. Hopefully he's not too far away."

* * *

"It's starting," Parrish said, walking towards Jackson. "It's getting bolder, making different, bolder moves."

Jackson wanted to ask, but knew far better than to speak out of turn. When Parrish got into this rambles, the best course of action was to just let him go until he either ran out of steam or got bored. He hadn't had anything to eat in almost two days, and his body was weak. Combined with the maddening silence of his almost- solitude, his mind was just as fragile. There was no way he was going to escape, and then his encounter with that creature left him emotionally wasted.

"This is what I saw coming, almost to the letter," Parrish was saying. "This, of course, is why I need you."

He stirred at that last sentence, some part of his mind fighting for focus when all he wanted to curl up and let the time pass. Parrish stared at him evenly now, the wheels behind his eyes turning in a frenzy.

Parrish walked over and crouched down. "Jackson, you are crucial to everything I came to Beacon Hills to accomplish. I saw this coming, true, but the timeline seems to have been accelerated. You have to think that I'm doing this to torture you, to drive you insane, but that's not true. I need you to revert back to something more… primal."

Jackson opened his mouth to speak before refraining. All he really wanted was to drift off to sleep, hopefully see Lydia there again, and maybe this time he would actually reach her.

"But I've also realized, after observing the town this past year, that your friends could also be of some use to me. So it's time to break you completely, but I still have to keep enough of the old you inside to reach out to them when it's time. I have something for you upstairs," he said, standing up and heading towards the stairs.

A few minutes later he heard some shuffling coming back down the stairs. A woman emerged at the bottom, flung to the floor, her mouth gagged and her hands tied behind her back. She wasn't someone Jackson recognized, and he wondered what the hell Parrish was planning on doing with her.

Parrish re-entered his view with a smug expression on his face.

"Who is she?" Jackson was too surprised over their unexpected visitor to remember the rules. "What the fuck is this?"

Parrish took the time to stride over and deliver to back-hand slaps to Jackson's face, sending his jerking against his chains. "Speak when you're spoken too," he hissed.

He went back to the lady moaning and struggling against her bonds on the floor. Pulling her roughly to her feet, he led her over to where Jackson sat against the wall. "This is someone I think you'll really want to meet," he said with a diabolical edge to his voice.

Sweat-matted hair fell across her face. When she took in Jackson, she made strange choking sounds behind her gag.

"Jackson," Parrish said in a voice just above a whisper, leaning in close, his face framed by the two of them, "allow me to introduce you to your birth mother."

* * *

The creature found itself in the woods outside the high school. It landed in the canopy, then snaked down one of the trees, its scales gleaming in the night air. Leaves and twigs crunched underfoot as it settled in among the shadows.

It convulsed, shuddering in the darkness. Its wings melted away, dissolving back into its back. The talons retracted. The eyes faded from a glowing yellow to a normal brown.

A few minutes later, a naked form stood beneath the branches.

He shook his head, confused. It had been so long since he'd been turned, and this was the first time he managed to regain enough control to shift back to his human form.

"What… is going… on?" He asked the night.

He felt powerful, and vengeful, although he couldn't say against what. Everything in his brain was confused, the past year a murky blur.

There were a few things he knew, however. First, was that he needed to get clothing. Something told him that he should not return home to accomplish this task, because that would arouse so many questions. Secondly, was he had to figure out what happened to him. This was beyond anything he ever expected, or wanted, and he had to figure it out.

That was how Matt Daehler found himself in the woods, planning on raiding the high school locker room for something to wear.


	5. Chapter 5: Twisted Ties

**Chapter Five: Twisted Ties**

Someone was knocking at the door. Well, not knocking so much as trying to pound it down. Derek grumbled in his bed, but he knew better than to expect Peter to travel down here to answer. He trudged to the door in only his boxer-briefs, part of him hoping that whoever lay in wait behind it he could hit.

The pounding persisted until he flung the door open with a low growl. Scott stood in the entrance, his face covered in shadows from the lighting behind him, but Derek could see enough to realize his friend was in distress.

"Is your phone on silent or something?"

"Hello to you too, Scott," Derek said, stepping back to make room as Scott rushed past him. "And my phone is… around here somewhere."

Scott began pacing back and forth in front of him. "I've put a call out to Argent, and sent him a few texts so far but I haven't heard anything from him yet. We need to get to the school, now."

"Calm down, what's going on here?" Derek's patience, as always, wore thin.

"I don't know how, or why, but I think the kanima is back."

Derek took a moment to ingest this information. There was a rustling from upstairs, and he felt as much as heard Peter begin descending towards them. "What makes you say that?"

"It attacked Brett and Malia," Scott explained about the cut on her throat. "But there was one thing she said that concerned me… Malia said it flew away. I've fought that thing before, but I don't remember anything about it being able to fly."

If it hadn't been so dark in the loft, Scott would have seen Derek's face go pale. "It's not the same kanima," he said.

"What do you mean? How is there another one?"

"When Argent and I were researching the kanima in the beastiary, we found out that what Jackson had turned into was only the beta form. There is such a thing as an alpha kanima, and just the pictures of it were enough to make our blood run cold."

"He's telling the truth," Peter said from the foot of the spiral staircase. "I've seen it too."

"Then come on, let's get out of here and do something about this. Liam, Malia, and Brett are all still at the school. If that thing comes back-"

"Do you have any idea who it could be?" Derek asked. "That's usually a big part of puzzling out how to stop it."

"Jackson turned into a werewolf, so I don't think it could be him. And besides, he's still missing, although we still don't know if he went to London or not. No one's heard from Matt in over a year, but he was twisting the rules of the kanima, so do you think…?" Scott let his question hang in the air.

Peter spoke up next. "It can't be Matt. He definitely drowned that night."

Scott and Derek both spun on him. "But how can you_ know_ that?" Derek asked.

"Because I watched Gerard drown him when he took control of Jackson. The old bastard didn't see me, but I watched it from atop the bridge. The juvenile psychopath is totally dead."

"Whatever," Scott said. "We have to get back."

"I'm afraid this fight has nothing to do with me," Peter said.

"Malia's there!" Scott returned before realizing they hadn't told Peter about his daughter yet. Peter gave Scott a lingering look, then turned back to go to his room.

"Sorry Scott, she's not exactly my type."

Derek and Scott exchanged a glance, then Derek went to throw on some clothes.

Wanting to apologize, Scott went to place his hand on Derek's shoulder. The older wolf shrugged him off with a knowing nod to the darkness Peter emerged from, as if to say he knew what Scott wanted to tell him, but now was not the time. There had been something weird going on with the former alpha for several months now, but no one had been able to get him to talk. He acted almost as in if he were in a relationship, the way he withdrew from their group, but usually he didn't hide this type of information.

Later, Scott reminded himself, he would have to get him to spill later. For tonight, they had to get a move on it. For some reason he doubted the kanima would return that night, but he had left two of his own scared at the school.

* * *

Lydia had the dream again, except for one difference. This time, near the end, she turned and actually saw Jackson. He shambled towards her across the flowers, crushing them beneath his feet, leaving a tangled trail of mayhem on the ground behind him. She was so surprised by seeing him that it took her some time to see the blood. It flowed from a jagged cut on his left ribs, down over his bare torso, splattering on the flowers like scattered rain.

On the horizon she could barely make out another body, lying still on the grass. It was too far away to tell for certain, but she thought it looked vaguely feminine. Light reflected off an object held out in one outstretched hand.

Jackson kept moving towards her, but it never seemed like he ever got any closer. Lydia wanted to run to him, but found herself frozen to the spot. Something about that reflecting light made her pause.

When she woke up, she quickly realized that she wasn't in her bedroom, but she recognized the halls of Beacon Hills High easily enough. Looking down, she saw she was only wearing a white nightgown. Her hands instinctively searched for a cell phone, but she found that in whatever sleep-walking-banshee state had brought her here, it had been left on her nightstand.

This wasn't the first time she'd been in these halls this late at night, but they seemed more ominous than usual. It was par for the course to hear screams echoing down the halls – now it was eerily quiet.

She found herself near the locker rooms, and, not knowing what else to do, began to move past them. As she passed the men's, she thought she saw something move out of the corner of her eye.

Ducking down, she knew how stupid it was to try to investigate this without some sort of back up, but at the same time she knew that she had been drawn here for a reason. Times like these made her miss Allison more than anything, and she wished that her former best friend were there with her. That wasn't possible, so she had to gather her courage and see what was going on. After all, there was a chance that this might not be all that dangerous – she generally found dead bodies, long after the murderer fled.

So why had she been brought here? Someone – or something – had definitely moved in the locker room, and while she had seen some insane things over the past couple years, zombies had never come across that list.

Placing her hands just beneath the window on the door to brace herself, she pulled herself up, hoping to not knock the door against the frame, and peered through the smoky glass. For a minute, she didn't see anything, then a shadow slithered along the far wall, towards the bank of lockers at the far end of the room, around the privacy partition.

She knew that if she shrieked, chances were Scott would show up in a minute or two. That didn't mean that whatever lurked inside the locker room couldn't kill her faster than that, so for now, she decided not to risk it.

One more look, she thought, and then I'll get home. Something wasn't right, she could feel it.

Lifting her eyes to the glass again, she saw nothing at first. It looked like the room had been blacked out. Then the darkness moved, and she realized someone was standing directly on the opposite side of the door. Soon his eyes were level with hers, and, finally, she was ready to shriek.

Before she so much as opened her mouth, the door banged open, slamming against her and sending her scuttling across the tiled floor. Matt strode over to her, lifting her by the collar and pressing her against the row of lockers. He looked like a trapped animal in ill-fitting clothing, his eyes wild. Hot breath poured over her face, and she sensed a supernatural strength in his grip.

"Matt, wait!"

"Where's Allison?" he thundered.

Lydia was shocked that was the first thing he asked, but then again, it made sense. "Matt, please, let me down," she begged, knowing that she didn't want to be the person to answer that question. Whatever Matt was now, it seemed to her that he had become a burning ball of fury, and she already had her fill of it.

"Where the fuck is she?" he asked, and the force of his voice rocked her head against the lockers.

Instead of answering, Lydia let out a wail, more full of desperation than ever before.

Matt let her go and backed away, hands covering his ears. When the sound finished echoing through the halls, he looked at her with a cross between fear and curiosity. "And what are you?"

He started towards her again while she backed away. "Matt, can we just talk about this?"

"What's there to talk about?"

Suddenly they weren't alone in the corridor. Scott and Derek were flanking Lydia, and both registered Matt with surprise.

Matt took in the two werewolves, then glanced beyond them to see Malia and Liam not far behind, both supporting Brett, strung up between them. He took a step backwards, holding up his hands, and said, focusing on Lydia: "Just tell me where I can find her."

Feeling better now that the cavalry had arrived, Lydia said in the most even tone she could muster, "Allison's dead, Matt."

His momentary lapse faded in an instant, and the rage rippled through his body. "You're lying."

"She's not," Scott assured him, risking a look back to Liam, who was giving him a questioning look.

Matt let out a howl of his own, turned, and raced away from them. Derek made a move to follow him, but Scott stopped him.

The small group just stood around for a moment, taking everything that had happened in. Liam and Malia were more or less in the dark on everything, and Scott had had too long a day to try to sort it out for them right then. "Guys, let's just go home, get some rest, and figure all this out tomorrow."

Derek and Malia took charge of making sure Brett got back safely. His paralysis had worn off, but he was still badly hurt.

"We'll make sure you get home," Scott told Lydia, and with Liam, they started to the parking lot. "What were you doing here, anyway?"

"I just kind of… woke up here." Lydia responded, still trying to piece together everything that had just happened. "And I thought Matt had drowned?"

"We're pretty sure he did."

"Who was that guy?" Liam interjected.

"I'll explain later," Scott said. "It's a long story."


	6. Chapter 6: Thunder in Your Blood

**Chapter Six: Thunder in Your Blood**

Jackson didn't know what to think. Parrish had just told him that not only was his birth mother alive, but he had also been keeping her from him for who knows how long. Part of him wanted to believe the deputy, but that broke his heart, seeing his mother in this condition. He wanted to scream, but also knew what punishment that would bring about.

"Want to say hi to mommy?" Parrish asked, delivering a swift kick to the woman as his feet.

Smartly, Jackson remained silent, opting instead to glare at the man, once again wishing his looks could kill. Parrish left the woman writhing at the bottom of the steps and took a few long strides over to the werewolf.

Crouching down in front of him, Parrish took Jackson's chin in one almost. The gesture was almost loving, but something about the gleam in the deputy's eye made his blood run cold. "Aren't you curious to know why she and your father faked their own deaths? Why they abandoned you?"

He was trying to provoke a reaction, and by now Jackson had grown accustomed to this particular game. Parrish loved nothing more than for Jackson to break the rules, so that he would be given the opportunity to punish him. As the punishments tended to be of a sexual nature, they weren't always all bad, but they always left him weak and humiliated. And there was no guarantee his mother wouldn't be spared the show.

So instead of provoking the monster in front of him, he continued stewing in his silence.

"Not feeling so chatty tonight? Of course, you don't want to upset your mother. But since she's here now, we all need to have a little talk." Standing, Parrish went back to the woman.

"By the way, her name is Natalie. Thought you might want to know, in case you never see her again." As he neared her, he reached into his boot and withdrew a long, slender blade. Natalie screamed against her gag as Parrish ran the dull side of the knife across her cheek.

Even from across the room Jackson could see the tears streaming down her face, and felt more helpless than ever. If this was a lie, a trick, he still didn't want to see an innocent woman being treated in such an undignified way. But he knew Parrish wanted something from him, or possibly her, and that at least for the time being, they were both free from any life-threatening danger.

Leaning down, Parrish used the knife to cut the gag from Natalie's mouth. "Fuck what the hell is going on?" she screamed, looking wildly around the room while gasping for breath.

"Stupid bitch," Parrish said, slamming his foot into her again. "Shut up until it's time for you to answer some questions."

Suddenly Jackson didn't care about the cruelty that awaited him. He couldn't stand watching this happen and doing nothing about it. "What the hell are you talking about?" Parrish started towards him but he continued nonetheless. "What are you even doing with me? And what does she have to do with anything?"

The slap was predicted, and also much harder than expected, but did not deter him. "Just tell me what the hell you want with us! You keep talking about a plan that you have-" another slap, sending his head rattling and stars swimming in his vision, but he wasn't done yet. "I'll do whatever it is you want, no questions asked, just _let her GO!_"

Parrish ran his hand down Jackson's torso, all the way down to his pubic hair. This action was too familiar with Jackson, and he knew what was going to come next. He didn't want Natalie to see, but at the same time he felt proud with what he had to say. Parrish leaned in close to Jackson's ear, the hand still playing around his member, and he began to sing one of those old songs quietly. Jackson had a moment to recognize that Parrish was blocking the woman from view with his body, and was grateful. Still, this sort of action never ended well for him, and he wanted to retain a bit of his pride, since Parrish had done such a splendid job of stripping him of it over the past year.

The singing stopped, and Jackson was rock hard. "That's enough of that, pet," Parrish whispered. "For now, at least."

Turning, he looked at Natalie. "Natalie, my dear, will you please tell your son about what happened in the months leading up to your pregnancy?"

Jackson was more confused than ever. What did that have to do with anything? There was nothing about his past, he thought, that led him to this situation, except maybe the events that transpired directly before becoming a werewolf. He never thought that his past was any more complicated than that. Was Parrish saying that something supernatural happened with his parents before he was ever born – and more than that, did that information have anything about him becoming the kanima first? Perhaps Lydia was innocent in that regard too. Whatever happened next, he knew that he had a lot to atone for if he ever managed to get out of this basement.

Natalie looked over Parrish's shoulder to meet Jackson's gaze. "I made a promise," she said in a breathy tone, "that I would never tell him about it."

"She speaks!" Parrish said with bravado. "Now, let's set some things straight." He turned to look at Jackson. "There is something I'm hunting, you see, and it's not the normal kind that I track down. I'm from an order that is dedicated to searching and destroying a certain type of supernatural creature, and it's not werewolves."

Jackson was trying to concentrate because this is what he had been waiting for, but his erection was getting in the way. He realized that he really wanted Parrish to sodomize him, although this was not the time.

"Jackson, what I have been trying to break you in for, despite your resistance, is of extreme importance. Before your mother gave birth to you, she and your father took a little trip – against her doctor's wishes, mind you – to South America."

"Please, do not do this," Natalie said from across the room. "Give me time to explain to him on my own."

"You've had seventeen years," Parrish snapped. "Time's up."

He was trying to process everything, but too much information was flying at him. Jackson wanted nothing more than to curl up in his shell and try to forget this nightmare, but he was stuck in it now. What were either of them talking about? He wanted answers almost as much as he didn't want to know.

* * *

Lydia made it home safely.

Scott began in the direction of his home, and walked for almost a block before he realized Liam was following a few paces behind.

"Liam, you live in the opposite direction," Scott said, not necessarily annoyed, just tired. He had had his fill of action for the night, and wasn't expecting another emotional load. Yet here he was, with his own puppy trailing him

"I just need to know what you've gotten me into," Liam said, picking up his pace a bit to match Scott's. "Who was that back at the high school?"

"His name is Matt, and he went to school with us. He was completely obsessed with Allison, an old swim team almost drowned him, and he killed a lot of people." Scott was hoping that the second two pieces of information would trump the first, but he was unsuccessful.

"You mean… your Allison?" Liam's voice weakened as he spoke. Scott had told him a little about his previous paramour, but left a lot out. He didn't want Liam to feel like he was living in anyone's shadow, and a big part of that was being selective in what he revealed about his past.

"Yes, her."

They walked in silence for awhile, heading further away from Liam's adopted parent's house and closer to Scott's. He knew that his mom was working a double shift at the hospital that night, and they would be alone if they wanted. Too much had occurred recently, and Scott wanted more than anything for some time alone to think, but it looked like Liam had other plans in mind.

"Liam, I'd really not like to revisit the past right now."

Liam was quiet for a minute, then said, "But what happens when your past effects me?"

Scott didn't have a response to this, as he honestly hadn't given much thought to it. Before, when Matt had attacked and murdered all those people, it was partly to do with Allison but much more about the swim team that had attacked him. However, most of that team was dead, so if his new agenda was trying to figure out who to blame for Allison's death, Scott was on that list. She would have never died the way she had if she wasn't helping him deal with the nogitsune, and Matt always used a roundabout way of dealing with his issues, which would surely put Liam in the crossfire.

So what he told Liam was, "Don't worry Liam, I promise you'll be OK."

"So you won't let anything bad happen to me?"

Stopping, Scott looked at his beta. He sighed, "You should know by now that I can't promise that. But I do promise that I will do whatever I can to make sure you won't get caught in the crossfire. Believe me."

"I do," Liam said, pressing himself against his alpha.

They finished the walk to Scott's house in silence, leaning against each other, their fingers almost interlocked but not quite. Scott enjoyed this quiet, and began to think that maybe it wouldn't be so bad to have Liam over for the night. He felt unsure how far he'd like their relationship to go, at least tonight, but he wouldn't mind sharing a bed. It had been a long time since he'd slept with the warmth of another body beside him, and it might calm him down from the turmoil rippling through his head.

At the front door, Liam suddenly pulled away. "I don't know, maybe I should just head home." He looked around, trying not to meet eye contact with his alpha. "It's late, and…"

"Liam, you're already here. We've had a long day, and we're both tired. You know you can trust me," Scott said, closing the distance between them and leaning in for a kiss.

Pulling away, Liam said, "This isn't what I was thinking my life would be like when my parents moved me here. Everything that has happened since I met you… maybe it's just all too much for me to handle. I think I need to deal with this in private."

"That's not true." Scott put one arm around Liam's back, pulling them together. "I've tried pulling away from my friends to sort all this out, and it only made things worse. If you're saying this, then you need me more than ever. Come on inside. There's no pressure, but I feel like you need someone with you tonight."

Liam collapsed against him. Scott gripped him harder as Liam began sobbing against his chest. "What is happening to me? I can't control myself."

"That's all part of it," Scott said. "That's the part I can help you with. Please, just come inside." He turned to open the door and took a step inside, waiting to see if Liam would follow. Sure enough, Liam came in after him.

They walked through the darkness without bothering to turn on any lights. As they neared the stairs, Scott took Liam's hand and led him upwards. Moonlight illuminated his room through the opened blinds.

Without asking for his consent, Scott began pulling at Liam's shirt, pulling it up, exposing his stomach to the pale light. The thought went through Liam's mind that this wasn't what he wanted right now, but he decided against it. A little contact right now would go a long way to soothing his mind. So he allowed it, even sliding one hand under the hem of Scott's shirt and letting his fingertips play along his abs.

"Don't worry," Scott whispered in his ear, "we'll only go as far as you want."

A minute later, they were lying naked together under Scott's blanket, spooning. Scott inhaled Liam's scent and reveled in it. This amount of contact was almost too much for him to handle, and he wanted nothing more than to finish what they continually started, but he respected Liam's wishes.

They didn't talk much, opting to just enjoy the physical sensations of their closeness. A couple times Liam began asking a question about Allison or Matt, but he always left it hanging, half finished, in the air. After about twenty minutes he realized that Scott's arm had gone limp over his side, and then he heard his gentle snoring.

Carefully, he lifted Scott's arm and slid out from beneath him. There had been no sounds from downstairs, which meant Scott's mom hadn't returned from her shift yet, so Liam walked naked towards the bathroom.

Once inside, he flicked on the light, shying away from the sudden illumination for a moment. When his eyes adjusted, he strode up to the mirror over the sink, and examined his body. Since his transformation, he had definitely built up a little muscle mass, but overall, nothing extremely noticeable had happened. He wasn't sure what he was looking for, but he wasn't finding it. Leaning in towards the glass, he let his wolf eyes flare golden, and then let his fangs emerge.

This was nothing he hadn't seen before, but he was now trying to reconcile this appearance with the person that had trashed his coach's car, and he found that he couldn't. Not only the bite had transpired to turn him into the person he saw in that mirror, and while he kept trying to sort it out, he just couldn't.

He hadn't noticed Scott coming up behind him until the older teen set his chin on one shoulder, and asked, "What're you looking at?"

"Nothing, I guess," Liam said, shaken that he hadn't heard Scott's approach.

"Come back to bed," Scott said, kissing along Liam's neck. "I was getting cold."

**A/N: One of my longest chapters on this story to date! What does everything think about the direction I'm taking? Love or hate, let me know!**


	7. Chapter 7: History's Lesson

**Chapter Seven: History's Lesson**

Jackson huddled against the wall. He hadn't slept at all the night before, instead revisiting what Parrish had told him over and over again. The way Natalie's face responded as he told the story only confirmed his words, and strengthened Jackson's fear.

The sun had risen some time ago, and he was alone. Parrish had taken the woman back upstairs after he said his piece, and Jackson had no idea whether or not she was even still alive. Having just met her, and then being told what he had been told, he wasn't sure he would care if the deputy had taken her upstairs and put a bullet between her eyes. He had done some pretty dark things in his life, but this was something else.

He mulled over everything one more time, trying to decipher what Parrish really wanted him to learn from his story, because he felt that it was more than just a tactic to distance himself from his birth parents. That was an absurd goal anyway, seeing as how he thought they were dead until last night. Whatever Parrish was trying to prepare him for, whatever danger he thought was heading their way, this had to be a key part of it.

_"__You see, Jackson, your parents were advised by a doctor that your mother was too far along in her pregnancy to be making a trip of any kind, much less one so far away as Chile," Parrish had told him, speaking in even tones, as if reciting a poem he had committed to memory. "But there was something they just had to have, couldn't live without, and they risked her life – and coincidentally, yours as well – to book a flight to a remote city with a long abandoned temple nearby."_

_Natalie whimpered in the corner by the foot of the stairs. She shut her eyes and began moaning, as if that would block out the truth from Parrish._

_ "__What were they so desperate to search for, you might ask. Well, that's a story in and of itself. Your father happened to be a collector of sorts – rare artifacts, ancient tomes, the like. And he had caught wind through some underground network or another that a particularly powerful object had been discovered, he couldn't resist. He was like an addict in that way, and your mother was quite the enabler."_

_Jackson really didn't want to hear anymore, but it would be pointless, not to mention painful, to say anything, so he just let Parrish continue. Part of him wanted to comfort the woman he had been told was his mother, but another part of him wanted to hear Parrish out before he totally set his mind to that._

_ "__Your father had this condition. Well, maybe that's inaccurate. Natalie, would you like to explain?" He offered Natalie the chance, but denied her the opportunity to take it. "There was an age disparity between your parents, Jackson. Sometimes a man take a wife thirty years younger than him, or a woman would do the same. Now what makes your parent's so special, Jackson, was that your father was almost two hundred years older than your mother."_

_He paused and let the information sink in. Jackson stared at him in a way that would have been disbelief if he hadn't been so incredibly exhausted._

_ "__Now this artifact, this life-risking object, was of utmost importance to him. Since the day he impregnated his wife, he felt different. Everything he had collected over the years had some power, and conjoined they all were what had kept him alive for so many years. But when you started growing inside of Natalie like a devastating virus, he felt himself begin to crumble. If what he had heard was true, this item was the key to reversing it, to keeping him alive so that he could raise you like a proper father would._

_ "__And so they risked it. They went down to a different continent, your mother constantly sick from the toll travelling was taking on her and your father literally falling apart. From what I hear it was really disturbing to watch, right Natalie? His fingernails popping off at random intervals, his hair turning shock white, wrinkles compounding wrinkles across his face by the minute. The fast you grew inside of her, Jackson, the more your father suffered."_

_Natalie had been sobbing for a minute or two by that point, and when Parrish detailed Jackson's father's suffering, she stilled. Then, once he finished this particular part of his tale, she threw up on the unfinished floor. When Parrish turned to see what she had done, she yelled at him. "You have no idea what you're talking about! You want to say that we were the monsters here? Look at yourself!"_

_Parrish strode over to her in a couple long steps, and back-handed her as hard as he could. "You need to shut up. Maybe after you hear what you've really unleashed, you'll understand exactly why everything is happening now. This is what I don't understand about your late husband, Natalie. He had all this information, all this knowledge, about the occult, about the supernatural, and he had never once questioned how his actions effected the larger picture? Energy cannot be created or destroyed, and yet he gets to do what he pleases and thought it would have no effect on the world at large?_

_ "__But apparently they never learned the main rule of magic, how it works. If you give something to yourself, you're taking something away from someone else. Maybe not someone human, or someone even alive, but you are taking energy for yourself that originally belonged to someone else. And what your parents stole on that trip, that energy that allowed your father to rejuvenate himself and care for what, what the energy of something much darker than they could have ever imagined._

_ "__I told you before that I belong to a collation of hunters, of a sort. No, we're not like the Argents, although we abide by our own code. We don't hunt werewolves, either. The threat we pursue is much more dangerous than simple wolves. Much darker, things that are able to destroy lives on a much grander scale. Things that have a tendency towards … vengeance."_

_At this Jackson's head shot upwards. That word, he had heard it before, as in, before this whole ordeal with Parrish started. It startled him so much that, without realizing it, he said the word, "Kanima."_

_ "__Speaking out of turn, at this junction?" Parrish laughed. "I'll punish you tomorrow for that. How exactly do you think you'd react to … one of our sessions, on the night before a full moon? I'm excited to think about it." _

_Jackson refused to look at Natalie during this exchange, he didn't want her to know what had been happening to him._

_ "__Kanima, yes. What your father was looking for, he found. A native shaman had it in his possession. You parents had more money than most, and yet the shaman warned them that the cost of invoking this particular statue's power went beyond that. Of course he took their money, but his warning was severe, and your parent's decided not to listen to it. They decided to do as they had always done, and use this new artifact for their personal gain. Natalie, here, out of fear of losing her husband and her child, but your father had much more personal reasons._

_ "__What they weren't expecting was to awaken a primal, brutal evil spirit. One that cured your father's illness, and allowed your mother and yourself to survive the trip, but it came at a cost. The shaman tried to warn them not to tamper with the power residing within the statue, but neither of them listened. Your father invoked the spirit, and your mother sat back and allowed it to happen."_

_Jackson was piecing this story together in his head. He had no idea who the hell his father was, but he somehow knew that Parrish was telling the truth. All he had to do to confirm it was to look at the grief on his mother's face._

_Daring to extend his punishment, Jackson asked, "Then why wasn't I raised by them? Why did they fake their own deaths and send me into the system? If they had everything they wanted…"_

_ "__Nothing is ever that simple," Parrish responded. "The kanima spirit your father invoked was old, and extremely, terrifyingly powerful. When you were born, it realized that you had much more promise than your father – an aging man clinging to his vitality through any means necessary. Your father figured this out when you were very young, and he quickly figured out his plan. Eager to outrun his choices, he and your mother went on a car ride, leaving you with a sitter. The plan was, if I'm not mistaken Natalie, to fake your own deaths so the creature would think you both dead, and thus leave you alone. They thought that if you were elsewhere, being protected by humans, the spirit would be thrown off your scent._

_ "__But they failed. Every aspect of their plan failed, if not all at once. When the kanima spirit realized you meant to separate it from young Jackson, it relinquished the power it gave your father. When the car hit that tree, he was thrown through the windshield and killed instantly. Natalie was spared, and when she emerged from the wreckage she saw the rotted, mangled corpse of someone dead two hundred years."_

_ "__How can you know this? How?" Natalie shrieked._

_Parrish started singing a song in a foreign language. Natalie curled up more than she had been, as if slapped and recoiling. Jackson felt himself pulled to Parrish's voice, and as much as he tried to resist he couldn't stop himself. The force Parrish's voice had on him was intense._

_ "__I know. That's all you have to know at this point." Parrish said as he stopped singing. "This collation I am a part of, we know things. That's what we do, and that's how we operate._

_ "__What you need to know, Jackson, is that this spirit didn't take your parents' bait. I waited for you, for sixteen years. It bonded with you until it found its opportunity. Derek's bite is what allowed it to enter you. What it wasn't expecting was Matt. He had such a rage within himself, against a juvenile swim team, that even an old spirit couldn't match."_

_ "__What are you?" Jackson asked._

_ "__What I am is a Siren. This is how I was born, and why I fight this kind of evil to the death." Parrish leaned towards Jackson, his breath hot on his skin. _

_Jackson thought back to every literature course he had ever taken. Sirens were famous, since the days of ancient Greece, for luring sailors off their course, crashing their ships on unsuspecting rocks in the sea, and eating them alive. They were notoriously mean-spirited, and so much more evil than their delicate songs led on. "Then what do you want with me? I'm not the kanima anymore, I've evolved into the shape I've wanted. What point can you make in torturing me?"_

_ "__Torturing you? I'm trying to break you," Parrish said. "The kanima may have left your body, but it now inhabits another. And it's evolved. You had the last, strongest link to this creature, and I think you are the only one with the power to stop it."_

* * *

Matt started walking towards his house as the sun rose, and then decided against it. He was confused enough, and he didn't want his parents to freak out knowing that their child had not actually drowned in the river a year ago. So instead, he decided to make a late-night run to the cemetery. If what Lydia had told him was true, the evidence would be plain enough.

He meandered through the tombstones, not knowing which direction to turn, wondering if there was possibly some sort of directory he could consult. After about ten minutes, he found the grave. There was a modest marker on it, and it sat next to her mother's plot.

Dropping to his knees, memories flooded his mind, of how he treated her towards the end, where his affection twisted its way into obsession. He hurt her as much as he loved her, and took it out on everyone she cared about. She had been the one silver lining to the dismal cloud of that high school, and he ruined it in a matter of weeks. As much as he wanted to cry, another emotion began to surface: anger.

Who would possibly do harm to Allison? He was going to figure it out, and when he pin-pointed the responsible parties, and everyone connected to them, he would show the world a new sort of pain.

Power welled inside him, and he didn't know how to control it. Standing, he had a sudden urge that he needed to get away from here. If he hovered here any longer, he was sure Allison's ghost would show up – he could feel it stirring beneath the soil already. That, he knew, he wasn't ready for.

So he ran, he just took off in a random direction and kept at it. After a few minutes he thought for sure he should be nearing the edge of the cemetery by now, but perhaps he was only going further in. There certainly wasn't a shortage of dead people in Beacon Hills, he knew from experience. But this place couldn't just stretch on forever, could it?

He felt his sanity slowly slipping away when he heard soft crying from behind a copse of trees not too far away. Matt slowed, crept behind one of the trees to get a view of who shared this sacred ground with him at such an early hour.

He wasn't expecting to see Danny, holding a bouquet of fresh wildflowers in one hand and clumsily swiping at his face with the other. He was standing over a grave that held no tombstone, just a small rectangular plaque in the earth. Matt was too far away, and at a bad angle to read whose name was on it.

Danny was speaking, but the words were under his breath, so to Matt it just seemed like gibberish. The words were coming fast, feverish even. After about five minutes, the sun nearly cresting the horizon by now, Danny fell to one knee and placed the flowers gingerly between the plaque and the top of the grave. Matt spun back around the tree, out of sight, as Danny rose and began walking towards what Matt assumed had to be an exit.

Waiting for awhile to ensure Danny would be gone, Matt stepped out from his hiding place and walked over to the grave. As he trod over the damp, dew-ridden earth, a sense of doom came upon him.

It felt surreal, reading his own name on a grave marker. Not too long after that, the sun felt too hot and bright, and his confusion over Danny's appearance replaced again by that sense of anger. Once he dealt with Allison's death, promised himself, he would find a way to reconcile his feelings towards Danny. They weren't as complete as how Allison made him feel, but they were complicated in their own way.

But… first things first. He trudged off in the direction he saw Danny exit, and began to formulate a plan. Not only did he need to discover the circumstances surrounding Allison, he also had to figure out exactly what this power was inside him now. He had a clue, of course, because he knew better than most what happened when you broke the supernatural rules. There was a slight chance his parents would have kept his tablet containing all the information from the bestiary, but it was just as likely that they packed it up and buried it somewhere – the attic, the shed out back, anywhere, really.

There were others who had copies. Lydia, for instance, he was pretty sure she had a copy somewhere. And she would be endlessly useful, if Scott's pack was still as tight as they were when he was still just a teenager.

An evil grin spread across his face. He had a destination now, and he'd be able to kill two birds with one stone, at that.


	8. Chapter 8: Moon Cabin

**Chapter Eight: Moon Cabin**

Parrish stood on the ground floor of the cabin, surveying all the work he had put into it over the last year. Blackout curtains covered every window from floor to ceiling. He had painstakingly ensured that every surface was arranged exactly to his liking. Everything that could be edged in chrome was, and glass decorations adorned as many side tables and shelves as he could fit. The old, warped hardwood floor had been replaced by limestone, and it served a larger purpose than soundproofing this floor from the basement, although he thought Jackson had learned that screaming would be useless at this point. The soundproofing went both ways – he didn't want Jackson to know why tonight was so special, why this full moon would help Parrish obtain his goal.

Every plan had to have a back-up, and if Jackson wasn't ready, and soon, to fight off the kanima, he had to have some other weapon in his arsenal.

The curtains were in place to block out the sunlight, so that he could fling them open when the moon was high in the sky. The glass and chrome would be utilized to reflect the light, and amplify it, sending it into the limestone, which would absorb the moon's energy. All he had to do, once the energy was built, was to get Derek to the floor, preferably naked. Once all that energy transfers into the werewolf, well… he'd be like a super-charged battery.

Lately, Parrish had been making more surprise trips to Derek's loft, and as the wolf nodded off to sleep, he sang him similar songs to the ones he sang Jackson, although these had a much subtler power in them. While he worked on breaking Jackson to nothing more than his base, animalistic nature, he had been fostering passion in Derek. It had been hard, sure, to not let true feelings grow for him, but so far he had held strong. Derek, on the other hand, was falling easily into his hands.

His phone chirped in his pocket. Derek was on his way. Derek's face had lit up like a firework when Parrish extended his invitation – his wait was finally over.

Checking the digital clock over the stove, Parrish noted that sundown was about twenty minutes away. Perfect.

There was still time before Derek arrived, so Parrish decided to make sure his other investment wasn't going to cause any trouble. He walked over to the bookshelf on the far wall, careful to move slowly as to not flutter the curtains to his right. He pulled out a rather thick book, revealing the button beneath it. Pressing it, the bookshelf slid to the left, and the door that led to the basement appeared.

He took the steps down slowly, deliberately. His fingers found purchase on the light switch, and he flicked it up, sending light to the naked bulb in the middle of the room. The basement was much smaller than the floor above it, and while the light was far from ample, it was enough.

Jackson was sleeping along the far wall, and barely stirred when Parrish went over to him. "Pet," he whispered in his ear, rousing him.

As Jackson regained his bearings, Parrish crossed to a shelf where he kept some supplies. "It's time to take your medicine," he called as he lifted an orange bottle with a faded label. "You're going to get a good night's rest tonight."

When he turned back around, Jackson was glaring at him. Parrish still hadn't figured out how he felt about the story he had been told, because he hadn't given him the chance. Natalie was being kept in a secure, second site of his. He had decided to keep her alive, at least for the moment. Parrish could sense that he was finally getting under the young wolf's skin, but he still needed to find a way to accelerate the process. He had put in his studying on this particular case, and he knew that before Matt drowned, the power dynamic between him and Jackson had started shifting.

The link this pair shared was strong, and if there was any chance of taking him out, of weakening him in any way, Jackson was the key. Parrish's songs weren't going to have any sway over the creature. His strength was better than a normal human, but nothing even close to that of a werewolf's, and the kanima had the strength of a hundred wolves.

If he sent Derek to fight the kanima alone, he would die.

Parrish took the dirty cup by the lone sink and filled it with brownish water from the tap. He extended the pills and the glass to Jackson, who took them silently and obediently.

Parrish patted him on the head in an almost loving fashion, said goodnight, and kissed the boy on the forehead before returning upstairs just as the crunch of gravel heralded Derek's arrival. He hid the entrance to the basement and went to the front door. The sun was far enough behind the trees that opening the front, east-facing door would not let in any sunlight. Only moonlight allowed tonight.

Derek practically bounced out of the car and raced up the small path towards the door, descending on Parrish like a liquid blanket, wrapping him in a hug and kissing along his neck.

"This place is beautiful! I can't believe you waited this long to show me!"

"Come on in, let's have a drink." Of course Parrish knew about werewolves' inability to get drunk, but he didn't really want to let on how much he knew of his paramour.

And Derek didn't disappoint in playing the game right along with him. "Some wine would be wonderful."

They crossed the threshold and Derek said, "It's awful dark in here. Shouldn't we turn on some lights?"

Parrish checked the time, then pointed towards the curtains. "Why don't you open those up. We can play in moonlight tonight, and then tomorrow morning I'll give you the official, lighted tour."

One by one Derek pulled the curtains back, allowing pale light along the furnishings as Parrish poured them two glasses of red wine. With the room slightly better lit, he took a look around. "Wow. This place is… modern." He meant it as a compliment, but had never been one for interior design.

"Thanks, dear," Parrish said, extending the glass to Derek. "But, as I said, you'll get the proper tour tomorrow. For now, let's drink up and just enjoy each other's company."

They sat on the couch, and Parrish could tell something was on Derek's mind. He was quieter than normal, and while brooding was his resting face, somehow it seemed broodier than usual, and it wasn't just the lighting.

"Do you want to tell me what's going on?" It was a gentle nudge, and since Derek rarely understood the term, he doubted it would get any headway.

"No, there's just some things happening."

"With Scott?" It was no secret that the man in his mid-twenties hung out with teenagers a lot – they always seemed to end up at the police station together, at least. And Derek had mentioned in confidence that he actually looked up to the young alpha, although he hadn't said it in those terms.

"Yeah, but it's also a lot more than that. I can't really get into it." Derek stood and began walking around the room, taking in each and every object that passed in his view. Parrish tensed up as he walked past the bookshelf, but he barely took a second glance before moving on. "I'm really glad that you invited me here, I wish I could be more excited about it."

"Don't be like that," Parrish said, "we both have lives. Lives that, sometimes, get in our way." He rose and walked over to Derek, placing one hand along his jaw line. "But we can't let those moments define us."

He kissed Derek then, if for no other reason than to shut him up. The moon was rising, and the room brightened. Luckily for him, it was a mostly cloudless sky that night. The limestone would soak it up, and all he'd have to do is get him naked and on the floor.

Derek returned the kiss, and Parrish stumbled backwards. Their glasses clanked down on an end table, narrowly avoiding the mirrored candlestick there, and Derek pressed on, pushing Parrish to the couch. He quickly re-negotiated that arrangement, twisting around until he was straddling Derek. "Now, now, you know I like to be the one on top."

A noise rose in Derek's throat that was totally foreign to him, and it took a minute for him to realize what it was: a giggle. He couldn't remember the last time that had happened, but it must have been before the whole ordeal with Paige. "And you know I like to be feisty," he said, flipping them back around.

"You know what I think?" Parrish asked with a gleam in his eye. "I think we aren't near naked enough for this." To demonstrate his point he moved his hand to Derek's crotch, running his fingers over the harsh denim, surprised to find the werewolf wasn't wearing any underwear. Derek wasn't one to normally go commando, but he found that he liked it. Liked it a lot, in fact. "So what exactly are we going to do about that?"

He could tell that Derek was feeling the effects of the full moon when he let out a soft growl and ripped off his shirt. He glanced down at Parrish in alarm, to which Parrish responded with, "Now sugar, you're starting to speak my language."

Clothes shed onto the floor and they took in each other's bodies like they haven't seen each other in months. Derek sucked at Parrish's chest, and he played in Derek's hair, running one hand down his stubble. They clung together, and then it didn't matter who was on top or bottom, they both took turns. Cushions fell off the couch, creating more room for the both of them.

The moon climbed higher in the sky.

Parrish could feel the moon's pull on Derek ripple through his skin, as if it were coming alive. The sensation was intense along his own flesh, and he pulled the them into a deeper embrace, their bodies basically becoming one. The power that radiated from Derek was an aphrodisiac to Parrish, and combined with their convulsing bodies, he almost lost himself to lust before remembering his mission and forcing himself back.

If Derek felt him pulling away, albeit slightly, he showed no sign. Every surface of the cabin's interior now gleamed with full-on moonlight, and he could almost taste the floor soaking it all up.

"You know what I'd like?" Parrish whispered, his breath hot on Derek's ear.

"As long as one of the next words out of your mouth is 'more', I think we're on the same page," Derek gasped.

Parrish pointed to a spot on the floor bathed in the moon. "I want to fuck you right there on the floor."

Taking a long glance, Derek gave him a questioning look. "On the limestone?"

"It's been sanded, and you can't say you've never wanted me to take you on the ground?" Parrish arced his eyebrow.

"Well, technically, 'ground' means outside, as in dirt. But I guess this could do for now."

Derek rolled them off the couch, making sure he was the one who landed first on the floor. Then he slid along the stone while Parrish crawled on top of him, inching towards the moonlight.

He felt something weird then, just as Parrish flipped him over and slid inside him. There was something happening that he couldn't quite place, but it felt terribly powerful. His eyes dashed around the room, actually taking in everything, seeing for the first time how reflective it all was. The moon glared through the windows, sure, but it also reflected off of nearly every surface, focusing on the limestone. Energy ripped through his body, as if he were being shot by a gun that only fired a pulse of pure moonlight.

Parrish rode him fast and hard, and just as he climaxed inside him, Derek let loose a roar, flinging Parrish back. He slammed against the couch with enough force to break the back of any human, still riding high on the ecstasy of his orgasm.

As he struggled to rise to his feet, Derek sprang up, the moon now hitting him from every angle. His muscles visibly bulged, and his eyes flashed from their normal steel blue to a blaring red, then to a deep violet. His howl intensified, his rage audible.

"Yes," Parrish said, grabbing the coffee table to support himself. "Yes."


	9. Chapter 9: Occultation

**Chapter Nine: Occultation**

Lydia and Malia met up at the park a few blocks away from the school in the middle of the afternoon a few days after the full moon. The banshee had an idea of how to figure out Matt's motives and location, but she needed to talk to Malia first. For the past several days, since Matt's reappearance, her banshee radar had been offline. She took it as a sign that no one else had died, at least not yet.

"Have you heard from Derek?" Lydia asked. First things first, as they say. Derek went missing the night of the full moon.

"No. Scott and Liam have been trying to track him, but his car is gone too, so they don't even know where to begin trying to pick up a scent. But they're out there, searching." Malia looked nervous.

"Don't worry," Lydia said, place her hand on Malia's arm, "they'll find him. They always do."

They were quiet for a minute, each shuffling uncomfortably in their places. Malia broke it by saying, "So I'm assuming you didn't bring me here just to ask about Derek. As far as I know, you don't even like him."

"I don't… hate him," Lydia said. "And I think he honestly has more of a problem with me, and what I've done to him. But you're right, there's something else I needed to talk to you about."

Malia stared blankly at her.

Taking a deep breath, Lydia said, "You were trapped in coyote form for eight years, right?" After receiving a curt nod, she continued. "Well, Matt was in that giant lizard form for a little over one year."

"What are you getting at?"

"I need to know what that experience was like. _We_, all of us, need to know. It might give us something to work with, about how to handle this situation. And what triggered your change back to human?"

"I don't really follow. The circumstance surrounding Matt and myself are completely different. Who's to say that what I went through is the same as what he's going through now?"

"We have nothing else to go on here, Malia. This is the only way I can think of to help right now."

Malia thought about it for a minute. "I don't remember all that much from the time I spent as a coyote – it was like I was trapped in a dream that I couldn't wake up from. Now, all I remember are my basic, animal instincts that helped me survive. What made me change back – I'm not positive, but I think it might have had something to do with the fact that, after all those years, someone was once again looking for me. Maybe there was a human part locked away in my brain somewhere that sensed that, and helped me regain control of myself."

"Is that really what you think happened to trigger your transformation back to human?" Lydia was skeptical, but it was a thought worth entertaining. But it also called forth another memory, one she couldn't quite place yet.

"Yeah, Scott and everyone were sniffing around the car wreck, bringing me presents – sorta – and making an effort to actually find me."

"Does that mean that someone was looking for Matt?"

"Like I said, I don't know if it would be the same for everyone."

Lydia was thinking now, about that hand in the woods, the bloated one near the river she had discovered all those months ago with Danny, the one that had vanished before police arrived. Since there was no body, the police just assumed she was some jumpy girl who lived in a bad town for jumpy girls, so nobody seriously investigated it. No one really tried looking for anything, and definitely not Matt in particular. But if what Malia was saying had any weight on the norm for shape shifters who found themselves trapped in an assumed form.

Her hand slid into her pocket, grazing her phone, and she randomly thought about how long it had been since she had tried reaching out to Jackson. His phone had been disconnected and she still couldn't figure out if that was due to him being in another country and he had gotten a new plan, or if his parents had called off any sort of search and decided they didn't need that line going anymore because their son was gone. Jackson's parents were a dead-end anyway – neither of them used any form of social media, she never had their phone numbers, and didn't know their email addresses. So since they left, she hadn't had any contact with anything even remotely Whittemore related.

"Lydia, what's going on? What are you thinking about?"

Lydia snapped back to reality, and the look on Malia's face made her wonder how long she had been lost in thought. "I'm just wondering if any of this has to do with…"

"With Jackson?" Malia finished for her, causing Lydia to regard her with alarm.

"How do you know about that?"

"I've… heard things," Malia said. "I know about what happened here before I came back. I've asked questions. I ask questions." She was entering that defensive territory that was all too familiar for her, and Lydia knew their time was probably drawing to a close.

"Sorry, I didn't mean to sound like you were prying into my personal life, that's not why I was alarmed. I just didn't know you knew, and that's actually what I was thinking about, so you caught me by surprise." Lydia was scrambling, trying to forgive her own misstep.

Malia closed the distance between them. "I'm sick and tired of people not realizing that I've moved past the point in my life when all I think about is trying to revert back to my animal self. I thought that you, as smart as you are, would have been able to figure that out by now." Lydia wanted to interject, but Malia pressed forward. "I thought that when you invited me here, you actually wanted to get to know me, but all you've done is pump me for information, and then get aggressive when you realized I wasn't as dumb as you thought I was."

Lydia shuddered, not knowing how to get out of this without being maimed by someone she had thought of as a friend. She should have known better than to push Malia this way, but she had such conflicting feelings about everything going on that she allowed her mind to be clouded.

"Malia, I am so sorry," she apologized again, this time letting her empathy seep through.

Regaining control of herself, Malia said, "No, I'm just… new at all of this. I wish there was something more I could tell you that would help, but I have no idea what to say."

She started walking away before Lydia could think of an adequate response. The banshee wanted to say something to her, maybe to apologize again, but she stayed her tongue. There was a lot to digest after their short conversation, and it might be for the best that she do that alone.

* * *

Scott and Liam had been running randomly through the woods surrounding Beacon Hills for a couple hours, and found nothing of any use. Not even the slightest hint of Derek's scent caught their attention. Scott kept pushing himself, looking for his lost friend, but Liam began to grow tired.

"Hey, wait!" Liam shouted ahead, slowing to a walk and pressing one hand against his side.

The alpha took a few bounds forward before he acknowledged the words. Grinding to a halt, he twisted around to look back at Liam. The beta was now leaning against a tree, trying to catch his breath.

"Come on, Liam, we can't stop now. We have to find Derek," he said, trotting back to him.

"We've been at this for days now, and found nothing. You've told me that sometimes Derek just takes off for days at a time randomly, but he always comes back. What's so different about this time?"

"It's different because Matt could possibly be involved," Scott said. He drew up to his beta, closing their distance to basically nothing. "And because, although Derek has done some incredibly selfish and messed up things in the past, he's still responsible for saving my life on more than one occasion. He's one of us, whether he chooses to be so or not, and so I'm not going to give up on him. And all those other times, when he left, there was always a reason. Something called him away, and he listened. This time, he's needed here, and he knows it, but now he's missing."

Liam soaked in all of Scott's words, yet remained unconvinced. "Even if something happened to him, if the worst had happened, wouldn't we have known by now? I don't know all that much about everything just yet, but I do know that if his disappearance was in any way to hurt us, we would have received the message by now. Right?"

"Matt's smart, though. He would want to throw us off balance before trying to take us down – he failed the last time. This time he would be playing the game that much harder."

"But it might not have anything to do with Matt!" Liam felt his anger surge, and wanted to punch something, anything, hard. He started breathing harder, although he already recovered from the fatigue of the run, and his eyes started glowing warm gold.

"Liam, please calm down," Scott said, used to Liam aggression issues by now. Usually there was only one thing that was foolproof in sedating him, but now was not the time nor place.

"Why? Why should I be the one to settle down? You drag me into this world, without my consent, by the way, and then you just expect me to follow all the orders you give me and not question you?" Liam's face burned red. "I know I'm younger, but I don't have to do everything you tell me to! I'm not going to just blindly follow you, especially when you might be wrong and putting us both in danger." His fist balled up and he punched the tree, sending splinters showering around the two of them.

Scott knew Liam was about to fall over the edge, into that place of absolute rage. Only this time, for some reason, Scott thought Liam may not be able to pull out of it. He thought back to the other night, when he saw Liam looking at himself in the mirror in the middle of the night as if he didn't know what he saw. While he still hadn't the slightest idea what that was about, he did know what he had to do now.

With one hand Scott pressed Liam up against the tree. Leaning in close, pushing their bodies together, Scott kissed him and said, "Please, don't do this now. I need you with me." He let his hands roam free, playing over the outside of Liam's tank top. "I need you to calm down, to be OK."

There was some power in that final word that caused Liam to relax, albeit just a little. He allowed Scott to guide his body, molding it against the tree. His pulse still flared, but he started to come back to himself.

Scott sensed that he was making progress, and kissed Liam again. "Listen, I'm sorry if I'm pushing you a little too hard. But," he said, letting his hand slide slowly down Liam's chest towards the band of his mesh shorts, "I think I might be able to cool you off a bit."

Everything Derek left Liam's mind, and he felt like all he wanted was more of this – more of Scott, more of his touch, more everything. He wanted to finally finish what they had started several weeks ago. He pushed back against Scott, mashing their mouths together, and lost himself. He didn't want to think about that night when he stood in front of the mirror, or what he thought he saw there. He wanted to forget all that, and lose himself in his alpha – the scent, the touch, everything.

Scott found himself forgetting things as well, as Liam pulsated beneath him. He wanted nothing more than to give in to his baser instincts, to do what his body commanded him to.

"Yeah, you could cool me off, if…" Liam said, kissing along Scott's collarbone. "If you gave me what I've been wanting." He smiled as he looked up in the alpha's eyes. "And something tells me that you want it too."


	10. Chapter 10: The Broken

**Chapter Ten: The Broken**

**A/N: Hey everyone, I've been rewatching some Teen Wolf, and I need to make a little note. I named Jackson's mother Natalie, COMPLETELY forgetting that also happened to be Lydia's mother's name. I did not intend for it to seem that Lydia and Jackson were secret siblings, so let's just say the two women had the same name by complete coincidence. OK? And, as always, enjoy and leave a review!**

Danny didn't get out much these days. After Aiden's death and Ethan's departure, he felt himself slipping into a depression. He quit the lacrosse team, which prompted a visit from none other than Scott McCall. Yes, he was adorable, but even his overly optimistic attitude wasn't enough to dissuade his decision. In fact, Danny wasn't sure why everyone was always swarming around one teenager. So he made it part of his choices to drift out of that orbit and enter a much more solitary one.

Since that night Lydia and he found that hand in the woods, he stopped going out at all, unless prompted by his parents. True, the police never found anything once they had been called, but he knew what he saw. Too many people were dying around him, so he thought the only way to avoid that pain was to just avoid people in general.

He was lying in his room the day Scott and Liam ran around in the forest seeking out Derek, thinking about the photo album he kept tucked under his mattress. There was nothing pornographic in its plastic sleeves, but it was a private matter.

_"__I'm everyone's type."_

The words still echoed around his brain. That day, the way Jackson's eye twinkled, the way his body moved, all of it. Jackson would always be his best friend, but those words hinted that something could be shifting between them, and Danny was excited to see where that could lead. Then Jackson disappeared, and only Lydia was there to support him in the claim that he wasn't actually in London.

But Lydia was dealing with her own issues, which left Danny alone with his photo album.

He rolled off the bed and rose on one knee, pushing his hand between the mattress and box spring, feeling for the cool plastic book. His fingers found purchase on it, and he pulled gently, easing it out.

The daylight was just beginning to fade, but there was more than enough to see by. He flipped open the cover and was greeted by a picture of Jackson, smiling after some lacrosse victory or another. The locker room stood behind him, peppered with their teammates in varying states of undress. While the other boys' bodies were nothing to scoff at, Danny never needed to look in their direction, not when he had Jackson always putting on a show.

The next couple entries were more of the same: pictures of Jackson, twice with an arm around Danny, but always smiling. That was one of the few rules about which pictures made it in – smiling had to be a part of it. The whole purpose of this book was to remember the happier times, before all the death and killing, before everything went dark.

When he turned the page again, he saw Matt's grin flashing up at him. Of the three people in the book, Matt was the most difficult to see. He used to think of the time they spent together, fixing that video of Jackson's first transformation. Matt was the one who put the loop in the first place, but Danny had been blind to that. He only saw the other teen's charming smile and bright eyes.

It upset him when he found out about Matt's obsession with Allison. There had been too many times, too many brief contacts between them, too many lingering glances for Danny to think of him as just a friend.

A few days ago he had taken flowers to his grave, but it was more of an afterthought than anything else. He had really been there for Ethan, and pulled a few extra flowers on the way for Matt. Someone had to remember him – he wasn't always a monster, the events of his past made him that speaking.

Speaking of Ethan, he was the last entry in Danny's book, and the only one Danny had actually dated. He was also, of the few boyfriends Danny had over the past couple years, the one to last the longest.

Ethan had been shocked when Danny revealed he knew about his supernatural status, but honestly it was something he had been working out on his own since helping decode the video of Jackson. When he told his best friend that he hadn't watched it, that had been a lie. He totally watched it, and then watched it again. He spent the majority of the next year seeking out answers, which he obtained from a combination of extensive online research and spying on the people around him.

Sometimes, he would send Ethan a text, wondering how he was doing. These texts were never answered. As far as he knew, Ethan had dropped off the face of the earth.

He was shocked out of his reverie by a tapping at his window. The sun was almost gone, and that side of the house faced east, so the space outside his window was wrapped in shadows. He was aware, however, that there was no part of the roof there, and no trees stood close enough for someone to have climbed.

His stomach churned, and he moved away from the glass, moving into the darkest corner of his room. Whatever lurked out there knew he was inside, it had to, but his instincts were taking over.

Another tap at the window, and Danny could have sworn he saw a talon disappear from view.

Danny jumped when glass exploded inward, sprinkling along the floor. The photo album slipped from his hands and bounced away.

Something distinctly reptilian flew in through the window and landed next to the bed. Danny screamed in terror, but it was swallowed by a gigantic roar ripping through the room, bouncing down the hall. His parents were out for the night, and for that, he was thankful. Whatever was happening, it would have been worse had they been here.

The beast stood around eight feet tall, its head missing the ceiling by only a foot. Its eyes glowed like a pale green fire. The most frightening feature was the wings. In all his searching through the supernatural, he had not once found anything with wings, especially huge, leathery ones with a twelve-foot wingspan. It took one long step towards Danny, breath exhaling in a hiss.

Danny fell to the floor, pushing himself back into a corner.

The thing took another step towards him, then its body began shaking. The vibrations began to peel away the scales. Danny wanted to scream again, but he found he could only stare in wonder.

A minute later, Matt stood naked in front of him.

He was speechless. Matt's eyes were filled with rage, and the expression on his face was hard to read. It looked as though he was trying to control himself, but at the same time wanting to let loose his emotions.

"Matt," he said in disbelief, struggling to his feet, "how are you alive?"

Matt moved in close. "I don't know."

"What are you doing here?"

Instead of answering, Matt slid a hand down Danny's arm until it reached his hand. Then he guided the hand to his abdomen, and Danny released a gasp when they connected. "I need help, and I'm pretty sure everyone else is going to try to kill me."

"How can I possibly help you?" Danny didn't know where this conversation was going, but he was certain he wasn't going to like it. "And-and what was that thing?"

"There's no time to explain that now. I need to talk about Allison."

Danny pulled his hand away. "Matt… Allison's dead."

"I know that," Matt said. "But since I came back, I've seen her."

"Matt, that sounds insane."

"I know how it sounds, okay?" Matt growled, and Danny sensed him losing control. "But it's true. She keeps appearing to me, and she needs me."

"Needs you for what?" Danny asked.

Matt took a couple steps backwards, his hands balling up. In the dim light Danny saw tears working their way down his cheek. "I know you have no reason to trust me, and I know how I've acted in the past, but listen to me now: I can bring her back. I can bring Allison back."

* * *

Parrish had been waiting for about twenty minutes, and he knew that he wouldn't have to wait much longer. Derek had exceeded his expectations, and his confidence at peak levels. His fight neared, and between Derek's strength and Jackson's connection, he would be able to take down the kanima with no effort from him.

Derek was ready, that much was obvious. All he needed now was the break down the last barrier between Jackson and that dark place inside of him, and as always, his plan would work. The morning after Derek's latest transformation, the wolf slept soundly all day. Parrish grabbed Natalie and dragged her back down to the basement. He tied her up, and then whispered in Jackson's ear that he wanted to two of them to bond, so the "stay silent unless spoken to" rule went on a temporary hiatus. And it didn't take long for the two of them to build a connection.

That took him to today. He would have preferred letting Natalie and Jackson continue their bonding activities for a longer time, but time was something he didn't have much of. New bodies had been sprouting up around Beacon Hills, clearly the work of the kanima, and he knew that Scott and his pack were both seeking out the human named Matt, as well as trying to track down Derek. They were several miles outside of town, but eventually those werewolves would be able to pick up his scent, and it would lead them straight to this place.

So he had nothing else to do except move up the timeline, which led to Derek's current hunt. Completely under Parrish's control now, and his strength exponential, he decided to test the extent of his abilities. Of course, he really didn't have much to test in the way of strength, but that wasn't the most important thing.

So he waited, rocking back and forth in the chair on the small porch, sipping on some hot tea. Soon Derek would return with the item Parrish ordered him to bring, and then they would have a nice little chat with Jackson.

He smiled, knowing in advance how Jackson would react, or at least, how he had better react. If this didn't work to break down that last shield, the things he would have to do next were almost unthinkable. So he smiled at that too. Either way, he'd have his fun.

Twigs snapped to his left, and he cocked his head to the side, his face beaming with pride as Derek walked out of the woods into the small clearing surrounding the cabin, holding in his hand the object Parrish had tasked him with returning. "Derek, you magnificent creature," he said, standing from the chair. "Bring the prize to daddy."

They walked inside and went to the secret entrance to the basement.

Parrish went down first, and when Jackson looked at him, wishing his mother would trail behind, he wagged one finger in the air.

"Now!" Parrish shouted.

Derek took the cue and tossed the thing he obtained from the woods down the stairs.

For Jackson, time slowed to a crawl. He heard the bouncing sound, and then he felt it. It felt like something was breaking, shattering even, but he didn't know why. That was about the time his mother's head fell into view, landing at the base of the stairs, her eyes staring blankly at him.

Jackson reared back and unleashed a howl unlike any he had ever had before, and he realized what had shattered within him.

Parrish looked on and smiled again.


	11. Chapter 11: Phantom Limbs

**Chapter Eleven: Phantom Limbs**

"Does anyone know what this meeting's about?" Liam asked, scanning the room. They were in an empty warehouse on the eastern edge of town, 'they' meaning Scott, Malia, Lydia, and himself. It had almost been a week and they still haven't made any headway into their search for Derek or Matt, and to Liam, at least, this secret meeting seemed like a distraction they didn't have the time for.

"Liam, I told you," Scott said, pulling the wolf close, "Danny sounded really weird on the phone. Maybe he has some information that will help us." Scott hadn't spoken with Danny in months. He knew that Lydia had gotten sort of close to him, but he thought they too had fallen out of sync.

"Who's Danny?" Malia asked, looking blankly around at the others.

"He used to play lacrosse with us," Scott answered. "And he was also Jackson's best friend."

"Not to repeat myself again here," Lydia cut in, "but this might have something Jackson also. You guys all know that I think something happened to him, and no one is doing anything about it."

"Lydia, you know that I believe you about that, but I just don't ever have time to look into it. And the police have investigated it, and found nothing. So I don't know what to think about that. Do you think, if Danny had any outstanding info about Jackson, or where he might be, he would wait until now to tell us?" Scott said, watching Lydia's face fall. "I'm sorry, but I doubt it's about that."

Malia saw Lydia's face, and stepped in front of her defensively. "But it could be about him, Scott."

Scott noticed Malia's movement, and tilted his head to one side. Something about their closeness seemed out of character for Lydia, because she was embracing it. Or at the least, not moving back. Normally she was not that into people in her personal space.

"I'm not saying that's not what it's about, but considering everything else that is going on, it's just not likely."

The exterior door opened and Danny stepped in. The others all turned to him, curiosity evident on their faces. For some reason Scott believed Liam was uneasy, and pulled him even closer, wrapping his arms around him. He didn't know if it was the lycanthropy or Liam, but the sensation of skin on skin was just incredible.

Danny walked into their circle. "Hi… guys," he started. "So…"

For a minute, they all just stood around awkwardly, unsure of how to proceed. Before Ethan left, he did tell Scott that Danny knew all about the supernatural element of Beacon Hills, so Scott really had no idea what Danny had to tell them. The rest of them waited for him to continue.

"I don't know exactly how to tell you this, but Matt's alive." Danny expected them all to react somehow, but they all just stood motionless. "Okay, so you knew that much."

"Yeah," Malia said. "We knew. How did you?"

"He came to my house the other day. And I was terrified at first, but he talked to me. He's changed."

"Yeah, into a monster!" Liam shouted, jerking at Scott's arms. The alpha managed to subdue his beta, but just barely. Liam's anger fueled his strength so much it frightened Scott. They were going to have to work on a permanent solution to this problem, but right now was totally not the time.

"I saw that part of him too," Danny replied, trying his hardest to keep his cool. "But it's more than that. He started talking crazy for a bit, but when I listened to what he had to say, it started making sense." Danny stared at Scott, and it made him feel uneasy. "He also told me that you guys want to kill him, and I'm here now to ask you to give him some time."

"Why would we do that?" Scott asked. He felt the weight of Danny's gaze on him, and didn't like it.

"Because of what he told me, what he wants to do. You see, he's completely convinced that he has the ability to…" Danny's voice drifted off as the rest watched on. He gathered his courage, and knew that what he was about to say would probably devastate Scott, but he had to get it out. "He thinks he can bring Allison back."

Everyone in the room sat speechless, especially Lydia and Scott. The two of them shared a glance, but neither of them could read the other's expression. A tension built up in the room, they all sensed that something was extremely wrong. Maybe it was the conviction in Danny's voice, or the silence from the two people in the room they looked up to the most, but either way Liam and Malia felt left out of something they thought they had a handle on.

Liam craned his neck and looked up at Scott's blank face. "Scott, I thought you said Allison was killed by Oni."

"She was," he replied.

"Matt didn't explain all the details, but he was pretty sure it's something he can do."

Scott could tell that Danny was convinced, but he still wasn't buying it. "Allison's dead, Danny. No one is going to be able to bring her back to life."

"You just need to hear him out."

"No. Not gonna happen," Lydia said, with Scott nodding in agreement.

"Next time we see him, we kill him," Malia said.

Danny took a couple steps back towards the door. "I believe him, and if you guys aren't willing to help, then I will." He glared at Scott. "Some part of me expected this from Lydia and the rest, but Scott, I remember how you felt about her. Those kind of feelings don't fade this fast."

Scott's face flushed red. He wanted to turn, to hide how much the jab hurt him, especially from Liam. But they all saw it, and he knew they did.

* * *

_I don't think they are going to help you._

Matt looked up, and there she was. Allison Argent, standing against the far wall, looked at him with pleading eyes. He wanted nothing more than to go to her, hold her in his arms, and tell her everything he felt for her, and at the same time knew he was unable to do so. She was everything he had ever wanted, and now here she was, but wasn't, all at once.

"I can't do this on my own. I need them."

_You're strong enough. You can do this. I'll show you how._

"But you said it was dangerous. I don't trust myself, how am I supposed to tap into my powers without any way of controlling them?" Matt stood and began pacing. "You told me I had to harness my power, but I don't even know how to activate it."

_You do know. Your strength, much like the werewolves, lies in your anger. _

"It's not that simple, though."

Danny still hadn't returned, so he didn't know exactly how their meeting went. He assumed Allison was correct in her assumption, however. He recalled how they all gawked at him that night in the school. Wishing he had gotten himself a new cell phone, he had nothing to do but wait until Danny returned.

_You can do this,_ Allison said without moving her mouth. It was very disconcerting at first, but Matt had grown accustomed to it. _Please, just help me._

"I'm trying to tell you, I can't!" Matt grew frustrated. "I need Scott at least, I need someone to keep me in check. I've heard about Derek going missing – who else is there?"

_Just trust yourself. I believe in you, why can't you believe in yourself?_

"I don't know what I believe in anymore!"

He wanted to scream, to run, to do something. Curling his hands through his hair, he started tugging, wishing that the pain would silence the thrumming in his mind. Everything was confused, and he couldn't figure this out alone.

What was taking Danny so long? Matt slumped against the wall, wanting the one friend he had left to return.

The one thing he knew for certain was that Allison could return, and that somewhere within himself, he had that power. The full extent of his abilities had yet to reveal themselves, but this wasn't outside the realm of possibility, he was sure of that. Without Scott, and access to the beastiary, he was completely lost.

_Please,_ Allison said, stepping towards him, the moonlight wavering through her body. _I need you. You are the only who that can help me. I'm lost here._

Matt turned away from her. He couldn't stand to think of her being this close, and also so far from the one thing he'd wanted more than anything in this life. He thought back to the file on his old computer, all of those "candid" photos he had of her, and wanted to go back to his old life. He knew that was impossible, and he couldn't think about what would happen should his parents discover he still lived.

"How can I help you when I don't fully understand what I am? I think I need to take a trip, down to South America, just to figure out who I really am. I understand what happened to Jackson, I knew what he was and what he could do, but I'm something different. I'm something… stronger."

_You can control it._

"I can't!"

_Yes you can._ She neared Matt, and while he tried to move away, she kept on him. Her hand fell on his shoulder, but he didn't feel it. _I need you to do this. For me._

Matt wanted to punch the wall. He felt the rage building inside of him, and when he looked down at his hands, he saw them start to ripple, revealing the scales underneath. The kanima was coming out, and he felt powerless against it. This was what he tried to tell Allison, and exactly what she wasn't hearing.

"Do you see this?" he asked, holing up his hand. "I have no control over anything right now!"

He risked looking back at Allison, and found her fading. She flashed in and out of sight, that pleading look in her eyes calling to him. He hated whenever she left him. It created this hole inside of him that he knew couldn't be filled until he saw her again.

"Please, don't go! Don't leave me!"

_Save me, and I'll never leave you again._

"No! I want to save you, I want to do whatever you want, but I'm telling you this isn't right. I can't do this without help!"

Allison gave him one last, lingering look, then faded away. Her voice crept across the room, this time as a warning.

_Either do what I have asked, or you'll pay._


	12. Chapter 12: The Threat Eternal

**Chapter Twelve: The Threat Eternal**

Against Scott's wishes, Liam followed him after their meeting with Danny. The beta trailed along, asking questions, ignoring Scott's silence. "Come on, talk to me about this!" He finally shouted, with enough force to make the alpha stop.

"Liam, please leave me alone. I need some time to think, and it's hard to do that with you here."

"I _need_ you to talk to me about this."

"Not tonight, not now."

Scott began running, much faster than Liam had any hope to keep up with. Ditching the sidewalk, he tore through someone's yard and into the woods behind their house. Liam tried to chase after him at first, but even though he knew he could always find him by scent, it was more than obvious that he didn't want to be found.

Liam wandered almost aimlessly. He headed in the general direction of his parent's house, but took a twisting way there. Thinking about Scott, and the way Scott had reacted to Danny's closing remark, made him nervous. If Matt was planning on bringing Allison back from the dead, and if he was actually capable of making it happen, he couldn't help but think that Scott would run back into her arms.

It was an immature thought, to be sure, but he still worried about it.

The feelings he developed towards the older teen hit him hard. He couldn't bring himself to really process them, and hadn't even mentioned it to Mason. It was obvious that Lydia and Malia knew about them, but other than that, what they had was just between them. No one else knew, and they could continue in their little affair unmolested by outside influences.

That brought him to thinking on Malia and Lydia, and their connection during the meeting. Something was going on there, but he had the feeling that they weren't sure of what it was yet. He couldn't imagine being close to someone with Lydia's unique abilities, and knew he would be walking on eggshells the whole time, wondering when the next time she screamed would be.

On top of all the hormonal emotions and problems, there were also the much more threatening matters to attend to. Derek was still missing, and an alpha kanima ran rampant. He didn't know Derek all that well, but Scott respected him, so he guessed he did too.

He knew even less about Matt. The only two real things he had were: Matt was an alpha kanima, a creature super powerful that none of them had dealt with in the past, and that Matt had an unhealthy obsession with Allison. The shock and horror on Scott's face that night at the high school wouldn't entirely leave Liam's mind. The whole time Liam had known him, Scott had been rock solid, a natural leader. Seeing him crumble, even slightly, threw doubt into Liam.

So now, alone and confused about basically everything, Liam wanted nothing more than the touch of his alpha. They had been teetering towards sex, if that day in the woods gave any indication, but that wasn't even what he thought of now. There was something about the super-heated body of another werewolf that was so comforting to him. Being wrapped up in a nice embrace would do a world of good to calm him down. This solitude only made him anxious, and part of him wanted to find anything to fight, if only to take his mind off things.

Trying to keep his rage in check – his heartbeat rising – he tried some of the methods Scott and the others taught him. Deep breaths, counting to ten, et cetera, et cetera… only none of them worked.

His temper flared, and Scott was the only person able to calm him down. Scott abandoned him when he should have known better.

Claws came out of his hands, and although he couldn't see them, he knew his eyes glowed. Standing on the sidewalk of a subdivision was not a good idea at the moment.

He took off running in the direction he hoped would allow him to catch Scott's scent. If he didn't want to be intimate that was fine, but he had to step up as an alpha and help contain his anger. If the full moon had been that night Liam was positive that someone would turn up dead in the morning. As it was, he figured no one would die, but that didn't mean no one was going to get hurt.

The woods grew darker the further he ran into them. Several animal scents caught his attention, called to him, beckoned him to follow, but in his frenzy he pushed those urges aside.

Finally, several minutes later, he picked up the familiar aroma of his alpha, and turned to follow it. Scott was somewhere deep in the forest, maybe somewhere near the site of the car crash where they found Malia.

Not too far away from that spot the trail shifted, leading Liam to a small cave opening. Liam stood at the mouth of the cave, catching his breath and listening. Scott was in there, alright, and he was crying softly.

Somehow this calmed him down, knowing that Scott was being as affected by this as he was, if only in a different way. He felt his claws retracting, the hair on his face melting back into his skin. Sweat beaded along his brow, and he swiped at it haphazardly with the back of his right hand.

The crying abated somewhat, and Liam heard, "Liam, its fine, come in."

He paused before moving aside the few strands of ivy covering the darkness and taking a few steps inside. The cave was shallow, only going back about twenty feet. Scott stood near the end, although Liam almost couldn't make out his silhouette. "Scott," he said, "I'm sorry I followed you but…"

"Don't worry about it. I'm just trying to work though everything. I was distracted," Scott said, "I didn't stop to think about how you felt about everything Danny said to us."

"But I am worried. Worried about you, worried about… us." Liam began picking his way through the darkness towards him.

Scott's head jerked towards him. "Liam!" he exclaimed, meeting him in the middle of the small cave. "I don't want you to think like that."

"But everyone's told me about how much you loved her. You've known me for a couple months, how could I possibly measure up to that?"

"No one's asking you to."

"But you loved her, in that all-consuming way that takes over your life. You can't tell me that isn't true. And now, there's a chance she could come back, no matter how much of a long shot it may seem, and I can't help but think that the minute she returns, I'm going to be left out."

Scott took Liam's jaw line in his hands, and kissed him. Part of Liam wanted to keep going, to get all his insecurities on the table, but a larger part of him was just happy Scott still wanted him. This wasn't the contact he needed, but it was something he craved.

Pushing Liam back against the wall, Scott's mouth started to roam beyond Liam's lips, down to his chin, throat, collarbone. Liam fell back to the wall, letting Scott take over. Scott took Liam's hand and pinned them to the wall, tugging at his shirt with his teeth. Letting out a low growl, his fangs slid out and he bit into the shirt, tearing it free from Liam's body.

"I love you too, Liam. And I'm not going to let anything hurt you."

Liam struggled against Scott's hands, and Scott gave in, letting one hand free. They both started groping around each other's waists, trying to undo the buttons on their jeans. Liam succeeded first, which prompted Scott to lay Liam on the cool stone floor, before removing the beta's denim.

Just registering Scott's words, Liam wanted to reciprocate, to let Scott know he felt the same way, but the alpha's lips mashing against his made it temporarily impossible.

Then Scott flipped Liam on his side, and spooned him.

"Scott-"

"Shh," Scott said, running a hand along Liam's ribs, "I'll be gentle, I promise."

* * *

For a long while, there was just darkness. He didn't know how long that lasted. Then, for awhile after that, all he could see what the searing red of his anger bubbling in his vision. He had the sense that something was broken inside of himself, but couldn't place exactly what that was, yet he didn't put too much thought into it because he didn't fucking care.

That was the best part, really – not giving a flying fuck. There was pain, and fury, and a whole mess of other negative emotions and physical sensations, and none of them mattered to him in the slightest.

This felt real, for the first time in a long time he felt alive. Alive in a void of meaningless color, sure, but alive nonetheless.

Out of the void came a voice. Someone sang to him in this wasteland, someone calling out for him, to bring him out of it. He tried to resist it, to stay here for as long as he could, but eventually it became too strong. His body tugged towards its pull, but he didn't feel like he actually moved – more of like something shifted in his mind, or gut, sending him in a new direction.

Then the light peeked through the swirling red, and it started to fade away.

Jackson came to, and found himself no longer chained to the wall of the basement in Parrish's cabin. They were out in the woods, presumably near the cabin, and he jerked up on his elbows.

"That's a good pet," Parrish cooed, kissing him on the forehead.

He looked around him and saw Derek standing against a tree not too far off, his eyes glowing violet. Something about the way he stood there, perfectly still, seemed incredibly disconcerting to Jackson. His eyes darted back to Parrish.

"It's alright, you can speak now."

"What's going on?" He didn't expect his voice to come off dripping with the fury he had experienced in that milky space, but his whole body shook with it.

"I've succeeded in both of my projects." Parrish rose and walked over to Derek. He grabbed the wolf by the back of the neck and kissed him as well. Derek returned, but stayed relatively quiet.

Jackson pushed the image to the side, although he did feel a twinge of jealousy. Parrish had been habitually raping him for over a year now, and while he grew to bear it, he hadn't thought he was beginning to like it. It wasn't until that moment that Jackson realized he might have developed some feelings for the demented psychopathic kidnapper. Then that anger kicked in again and he shot to his feet.

"Why do I feel like this? Why am I so pissed off? What did you do to me?"

The questions came out rapid fire, but Parrish stood by idly until he finished his little tirade. "I told you that I need you to fight off a kanima, if you remember. That you had a special connection with this particular creature, since it once resided in your body. And you know that kanimas are a weapon of pure vengeance."

"Yeah, so what?"

"Jackson, you need to be thinking a little bit harder about this. You're smarter than this, but you're not putting your brain into it."

Parrish still seemed occupied with Derek, and Jackson decided to test the limits of his newfound temper. He could sense how strong it made him, how much stronger he was than ever before. He rushed towards the woods, trying to flee, not wanting any part of this sick game any longer.

Not ten steps later, Derek pushed him, using his momentum to fling him off balance, and he tripped over a rock.

"And that's partly why Derek's here with us now. He has other uses in the future, for sure, but he's your new babysitter." Parrish strolled up beside them.

"Okay, so keep talking," Jackson said, checking his body. He should have cuts, bruises, but found none. "But know – if I want to get out of this, you've just supercharged my abilities. I will stop at nothing to tear myself free from you."

"Poor, poor Jackson. There are so many fail-safes in place with you. I've been hunting this particular monster for so long, I've had time to work on every angle." Parrish helped Jackson to his feet, and then moved him into Derek. "Some of those songs I've been singing to you haven't been about control and submission."

The second they touched, Jackson was overwhelmed with lust. It was as if he had taken another one of Parrish's cocktails, but he knew he hadn't. Derek's violet eyes were hard to read, but his body language was another matter. They both wanted each other's bodies terribly, and would have fucked right there if Parrish hadn't whistled a little something, like a command to a dog. They jumped apart like they were electrocuted.

"There are so many things you don't know Jackson. If you've seen half the horrors of this world, because of those things, that I have, you'd be begging to help me. Once the kanima collects and figures out how to control himself, there will be chaos in Beacon Hills like you've never seen. This creature will put the nogitsune to shame."

"And what do you need with me?"

"That connection you have – it's important. At the very least it will provide a distraction, maybe a crucial one. But combine that with your now shared anger, it will be a deeper connection. One that might be able to twist inside the kanima, undo its connection to the host."

Jackson walked up, pressing his chest against Parrish's. "I really hate you. You force all this shit on me, for what? One fight?" The wall had vanished, the one that separated him from all his baser instincts, and it took all his control to not attempt to rip the deputy's heart out. "I'll help you, on one condition."

Smiling, Parrish draped his arms around Jackson's shoulders, like they were about to dance. "And what would that be, sweetheart?"

"Once this is done," Jackson said, staring deep into his eyes, "this, all of this," he waved his hands around, "is done. You get the fuck out of Beacon Hills, and never look back. You leave this town to the people in it."

"Oh, dear boy… The only way you'd be rid of me is to kill me. I'm in your brain now, your blood." He gestured Derek to join them. "And soon, the three of us, we'll be unstoppable."


End file.
